Familiarity and Personal Experience as Mediators of Recall When Planning for Future Contingencies

In this article, we demonstrate that planning tasks enhance recall when the context of planning (a) is self-referential and (b) draws on familiar scenarios represented in episodic memory. Specifically, we show that when planning tasks are sorted according to the degree to which they evoke memories o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stanley B. Klein, Theresa E. Robertson, Andrew W. Delton, Moshe L. Lax
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.259.3928
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/papers/KleinRobertsonDeltonLax_inpress_PlanningAndSelf-reference.pdf
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Summary:In this article, we demonstrate that planning tasks enhance recall when the context of planning (a) is self-referential and (b) draws on familiar scenarios represented in episodic memory. Specifically, we show that when planning tasks are sorted according to the degree to which they evoke memories of personally familiar scenarios (e.g., planning a picnic), recall is reliably superior to tasks that fail to do so (e.g., planning an Arctic trek). We discuss the implications of these findings for planning tasks and their relation to episodic memory.