Spatial Awareness and Memory Reconsolidation: The Role of Spatial Awareness in Memory Updating

Abstract

Hubach, Gomez, Hardt and Nadel (2007) provided the first demonstration of reconsolidation of episodic memory in humans. Memory for a set of20 objects was modified by the presentation of a new set of 20 objects if and only if participants were reminded of the first learning episode before learning the new set. Hupbach, Hardt, Gomez and Nadel (200S) then explored the importance of spatial context in the reminder condition. A bimodal split between participants in memory updating occurred when they were brought to a different context for Session 3. The present study investigates this bimodal split by distributing a spatial awareness assessment during Session 3 using the same methods as Hupbach et al. (200S). Forty-two adults aged lS-25 were tested in two paradigms. A significant difference was found between average intrusion rate of Low SAA scorers and High SAA scorers (p = .01S). A correlation was found between intrusion rate and spatial awareness assessment score in Set 1 recall (R² = .49) while no correlation (R² = .05) was found for intrusions into Set 2 recall. These implications are important for learning how memory updating occurs in different types of people, highly spatially aware and average or low spatially aware.