Cueing others’ memories

Abstract

Many situations require us to generate external cues to support later retrieval from memory. For instance, we create file names in order to cue our memory to a file’s contents, and instructors create lecture slides to remember what points to make during classes. We even generate cues for others when we remind friends of shared experiences or send colleagues a computer file that is named in such a way so as to remind them of its contents. Here we explore how and how well learners tailor retrieval cues for different intended recipients. Across three experiments, subjects generated verbal cues for a list of target words for themselves or for others. Learners generated cues for others by increasing the normative cue-to-target associative strength but also by increasing the number of other words their cues point to, relative to cues that they generated for themselves. This strategy was effective: such cues supported higher levels of recall for others than cues generated for oneself. Generating cues for others also required more time than generating cues for oneself. Learners responded to the differential demands of cue generation for others by effortfully excluding personal, episodic knowledge and including knowledge that they estimate to be broadly shared.

Appendix A

We combined the cued recall performance data across Experiments 1 and 2 to analyze the pattern of data across all subjects, and the results are shown in Fig. 6. A repeated measures ANOVA on cued recall revealed a significant interaction between cue originator and intended recipient (F(1, 78) = 14.82, p < 0.001, η² _partial = 0.16), and a main effect of cue originator (F(1, 78) = 304.05, p < 0.001, η² _partial = 0.80). Follow-up t-tests show that when the cue originator is a different learner, cues intended for others led to better memory (M = 0.47) than cues intended for self (M = 0.40; t(79) = 3.28, p = 0.002, η² _partial = 0.37). When the cue originator is oneself, cues intended for others led to numerically worse recall (M = 0.75) than cues intended for self (M = 0.77), but this difference did not reach significance (t(79) = 1.55, p = 0.12, d = 0.18).

We further analyzed cued recall performance combined across Experiments 1 and 2 based upon whether the learner provided different cues for self and for other. Cue originators differentiated between cues for self and for others on approximately 50 % of the trials. For the subset of trials on which the cue originator provided different cues for self and other, the cue originator interacted with intended recipient (F(1,54) = 17.61, p < 0.001, η² _partial = 0.25), as shown in the left graph in Fig. 6. T-tests showed that cues for others were better at supporting memory than cues for self when given to others (t(60) = 4.44, p < 0.001, d = 0.57) and cues for self were better at supporting memory than cues for others when given to self (t(78) = 2.01, p = 0.05, d = 0.24). As shown in the right graph of Fig. 6, the proportion of targets that learners recalled did not differ based upon intended recipient when the cue originator did not provide different cues for self and for others (F(1, 62) = 1.08; p = 0.30, η² _partial = 0.02), as recall could only differ through the random assignment of items to conditions. When learners distinguished between cues for self and cues for others, learners’ own cues intended for themselves were more beneficial than learners’ cues intended for others. When learners relied upon idiosyncratic information in generating their cue, it supported their own future memory performance better than shared, common cues.

Fig. 6

Cued recall performance as a function of cue originator and intended recipient, conditionalized upon whether the cue originator provided different cues for self and other (left graph) or did NOT provide different cues for self and other (right graph). Error bars (and corresponding number labels) show the 95 % confidence intervals of the difference between intended recipients for each pair of bars. Both graphs show data combined across Experiments 1 and 2