Memory Updating Following Episodic and Semantic Retrieval: Evidence for Shared Mechanisms

People often update existing memories when they encounter contradictory information, but it remains unclear whether updating following episodic and semantic retrieval relies on distinct or shared mechanisms. Two experiments examined this issue by comparing updating following retrieval from episodic and semantic memory. In Phase 1, participants studied cue-homograph-target triplets. In Phase 2, they either recalled targets from Phase 1 or retrieved targets from semantic memory before viewing updated targets that were semantically related or unrelated to the retrieved targets. In Phase 3, they recalled the updated and retrieved targets. Updated-target recall was higher for related than unrelated targets and higher following episodic than semantic retrieval. Critically, conditional analyses showed that updated-target recall was higher when earlier retrieved targets were later recollected, and this benefit was larger for related than unrelated targets. Moreover, when retrieved targets were unrelated to updated targets and not later recollected, episodic retrieval produced greater impairment in updated-target recall than semantic retrieval. These findings suggest that updating following episodic and semantic retrieval relies on a shared retrieval-based process that is complemented by semantic relatedness, but that proactive interference is greater when episodic retrieval increases the accessibility of prior targets without supporting their integration with updated information.