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Sketchpad Series

Exploring the link between self-reported episodic memory traits and differences in episodic memory content and retention across time

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

Catalina Yang¹ (catalina.yang@mail.utoronto.ca), Quynh Nguyen¹, Nicole Yuen¹, Morgan Barense^1,2, Katherine Duncan¹; ¹University of Toronto, ²Rotman Research Institute

People significantly differ in how they remember past events. Some recall events in vivid, detail-rich ways, while others recall events in a more implicational and semantic way. These individual differences have been posited to reflect trait-level autobiographical memory abilities. The Survey of Autobiographical Memory (SAM) is a widely used tool for assessing trait mnemonics, which reliably assesses self-perceived recollective and visual imagery abilities. However, it remains unclear how the SAM, particularly its episodic sub-score, relates to objective measures of autobiographical and episodic memory. The current study investigates whether self-reported trait mnemonics on the SAM predict 1) the quality and quantity of a person’s episodic memories for naturalistic video stimuli and 2) differences in memory retention patterns over short versus long delays. In our ongoing study (n=40/100), we administer the SAM and six other meta-memory and psychometric questionnaires. We test episodic memory using a three-part, within-in-subjects design task, where participants first view 30 brief narrative videos. After a short delay (30 min), participants complete a structured verbal memory interview on the contents of half of the videos. Then participants return after a long delay (2 weeks) to complete another interview on the remaining videos. To analyze our large free recall dataset, we will use LLMs to score how accurately people recall different types of details and then validate model outputs by comparing them with manually scored response. We expect our results to elucidate how self-reported trait mnemonics relate to episodic memory contents, and their qualitative and quantitative changes at different delays.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic