When
Signy Sheldon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
McGill University
The role of episodic memory construction in driving differences in remembering
Remembering events from our lives requires us to engage episodic memory processes to construct mental representations of these events upon retrieval. When constructing such representations, these episodic memory processes can flexibly access different sets of details related to an event, which why the same memory can be recalled differently, both across scenarios and individuals. In this talk, I will discuss the episodic memory mechanisms that drive such differences in event memory. First, I will present work that illustrates how individuals can strategically construct memories differently to meet changing retrieval goals and how this impacts tasks like planning and decision-making. Next, I will present neuroimaging data that indicates there are separable hippocampal-cortical processes that support constructing memories which emphasize different content: either the perceived details or conceptual details from an event. I will discuss how the existence of these separable mechanisms can explain both individual differences in remembering real-world experiences as well as how remembering changes with age. This talk will end with a discussion of the adaptive functions for having such distinctions in the way we remember.