Schedule of Events | Symposia

Confirmed or disconfirmed – predictions pay off for memory retention

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Regine Bader¹ (regine.bader@mx.uni-saarland.de), Samira Engels¹, Mecklinger Axel¹; ¹Saarland University, Germany

Predicting upcoming information is fundamental for language comprehension, but its impact on long-term retention is less well understood. In strongly constraining (SC) contexts, such as "The birthday party was over, and Helene wanted to go home. She ordered herself a taxi," the target ("taxi") is expected because it aligns with prior knowledge (schema). Schema-based memory theories suggest that predicted information is better remembered due to this alignment. Alternatively, predictions that merely confirm expectations might be pro-cessed superficially, weakening retention. In contrast, unpredicted information may be es-pecially memorable due to prediction errors (PEs), which signal mismatches and prompt updates to the current situation model. Research on the memory effects of confirmed versus disconfirmed predictions has produced mixed results. One important factor might be if unexpected information can plausibly be integrated into the context (e.g., "some food" for the example above) or is anomalous ("a pillow"). Moreover, a comparison with a baseline condition, where minimal predictions are possible, is necessary. Weakly constraining (WC) contexts, like "Mathilde knew exactly what she wanted to do next. She ordered herself a taxi," are a suitable baseline as they minimize target predictability. In our study, participants read WC contexts and SC contexts, where the target was either expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous. After a 3-minute retention interval, participants discriminated old targets from new words. We found that predicted and unpredicted targets (plausible or anomalous), were better remembered than targets in WC contexts. Thus, both schema congruency and PEs during language comprehension enhance long-term memory formation.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic