my serendipities

Can the simple act of recognizing a face as you walk down the street change the way we think? Or can taking the time to notice something new on our way to work change what we remember about that walk? In a new study published in the journal Science, New York University researchers show that remembering something old or noticing something new can bias how you process subsequent information.

This novel finding suggests that our memory system can adaptively bias its processing towards forming new memories or retrieving old ones based on recent experiences. For example, when you walk into a restaurant or for the first time, your memory system can both encode the details of this new environment as well as allow you to remember a similar one where you recently dined with a friend. The results of this study suggest that what you did right before walking into the restaurant can determine which process is more likely to occur.

By contrast, in another experiment, the researchers demonstrated that the same manipulation can also influence how we form new memories. In this study, the researchers tested how well participants were able to form links between overlapping memories. They found that participants were more likely to construct these links when the overlapping memories were formed immediately after retrieving an unrelated old object as compared to identifying a new one. This suggests that after processing old objects, participants were more likely to retrieve the associated memories and link them to an ongoing experience.

One act of remembering can influence future acts: study

Source: medicalxpress.com