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Long-term memory under uncertainty: the impact of cue reliability in attentional prioritization of long-term memory representations

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Melinda Sabo¹ (sabo@ifado.de), Kia Nobre¹; ¹Wu Tsai Institute | Yale University

Attentional prioritization is well-established in the perceptual and working memory domains, yet its role in long-term memory retrieval remains underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by characterizing attentional prioritization during long-term memory retrieval under varying cue reliability. Using an episodic learning paradigm, participants encode associations between scenes and two objects. In a subsequent retrieval phase, participants are presented with a scene and asked to report the color of the indicated object. Before revealing the to-be-tested object, participants are presented with a retro-cue, which probabilistically indicates the target object. Three cue-reliability levels are introduced: 90%, 70%, and 50% (uninformative). Behavioral benefits reflected in valid trials and behavioral costs captured in invalid trials are assessed. Two scenarios are hypothesized: (1) behavioral benefits and costs mirror working memory patterns, with greater benefits and costs in the 90% condition compared to 70%; (2) all objects are robustly represented regardless of the cue, leading to high benefits and minimal costs across conditions. Magnetoencephalogram decoding analyses will examine whether neural representations scale with cue reliability or display comparable above-chance decoding performance across conditions. These findings aim to clarify the interplay between attentional prioritization and long-term memory under uncertainty.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other