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. 2001 Mar;8(1):162-7.
doi: 10.3758/bf03196153.

Scale invariance in the retrieval of retrospective and prospective memories

E A Maylor  1 , N Chater, G D Brown
Affiliations

Scale invariance in the retrieval of retrospective and prospective memories

E A Maylor et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2001 Mar.

Abstract

How does memory retrieval depend on time scale? One strong hypothesis is that such retrieval is scale-invariant (i.e., invariant across different time scales). To test this hypothesis, three groups of participants were given 4 min to recall what they did yesterday, last week, or last year (retrospective memories), and 4 min to recall what they intended to do tomorrow, next week, or next year (prospective memories). In line with scale invariance, retrieval performance was indistinguishable across time scales, for both retrospective and prospective memory. An additional finding was that significantly more prospective memories were recalled than retrospective memories, confirming previous observations of the "intention-superiority effect" (Goschke & Kuhl, 1993).

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