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Poster C in Poster Session C: Wednesday, August 5, 9:30 – 11:15 am, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Memories reflect the expected value of abstraction

Jae-Young Son¹, Serra E. Favila¹; ¹Brown University

Presenter: Jae-Young Son

For an intelligent memory system to support decision-making, it must balance competing needs for specificity and generalization. Given that both are useful for different decision-making contexts, it is unclear how people create appropriately abstracted memories for an uncertain future. Here, we demonstrate that people form expectations about the value of abstraction for future decision-making, and that these expectations shape what kinds of memories are created. As a consequence, memories fail to support adaptive choice when decision-making demands are incongruent with prior expectations.

Topic Area: Memory, Learning & Knowledge Structures