Holistic retrieval of episodic memory: Evidence from retrieval practice

Imagining an event that comprises several elements (e.g., an object, person, and a location) produces a memory in which all elements and their mutual associates are encoded and stored in memory. In the current study, we asked whether the task of retrieving a specific element from the memory would automatically result in the incidental retrieval of the other associated elements. In Experiment 1 (N = 61), participants encoded 40 events in total, of which half were subjected to a retrieval practice session in which only a single association was practiced. Subsequently, participants performed a cued-recall task in which all associations from all events were probed. Consistent with a holistic retrieval account, the results showed an equivalent retrieval-practice benefit for the practiced and the unpracticed associations from events that had undergone retrieval practice. In Experiment 2 (N = 60), participants encoded the events either through a closed-loop procedure (i.e., all pairwise associations were encoded) or an open-loop procedure (i.e., only two pairwise associations were encoded), with the expectation that the open-loop encoding procedure would result in a less holistic memory representation. Consistent with this reasoning, the results showed a more selective retrieval practice benefit for events encoded through the open-loop procedure. Taken together, the results provide evidence for holistic retrieval of episodic memories.