Research

Say you have an important meeting coming up tomorrow. It’s natural to think about this event beforehand, and imagine how it might play out. My research has shown that imagining a future event in this way can actually change what we remember about that event after it happens. For example, imagining the meeting going well beforehand might bias you to remember the positive aspects of the meeting, and forget the negative aspects later on. You might also mistake details from your imagined scenario as having actually occurred in the meeting. Previous research shows that we use our memory to imagine possible future events (e.g., Addis & Schacter, 2007). My research shows that the link between memory and future thinking goes both ways: thinking about the future can change what we remember about the past. Since we often imagine future events in our day-to-day lives, this interaction between future thinking and memory has important consequences for the accuracy of our memory.

Relevant publications:

An optimistic outlook creates a rosy past: The impact of episodic simulation on subsequent memory

Devitt, A.L., & Schacter, D.L. (2018). Psychological Science, 29, 936–946.

Looking on the bright side: Aging and the impact of emotional future simulation on subsequent memory

Devitt, A.L., & Schacter, D.L. (2019). Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

As we get older, we generally remember less, what we do remember is less detailed, and we become more vulnerable to memory distortion. My research examines the effect of healthy aging on our ability to remember and imagine specific life events. Using multilevel modelling, my work shows that as we age, we may produce more non-specific (semantic) detail when remembering or imagining personal life events to compensate for a lack of specific (episodic) detail. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, I’ve also shown that there are age-related changes in brain activation when we imagine negative future events. These changes might contribute to older adults’ increased positivity when thinking about the future. By understanding how our healthy aging affects memory and imagination, we can better design interventions to improve memory and quality of life with age.

Relevant publications:

Episodic and semantic content of memory and imagination: A multilevel analysis

Devitt, A.L., Addis, D.R., & Schacter, D.L. (2017). Memory & Cognition, 45, 1078–1094.

Age-related changes in repetition suppression of neural activity during emotional future simulation

Devitt, A.L., Thakral, P.P., Szpunar, K., Addis, D.R., & Schacter, D.L. (2020). Neurobiology of Aging.

Remembering is similar to assembling a jigsaw puzzle: to form a memory, we have to find all the correct pieces and put them together in the right way. Sometimes this reassembly process goes wrong, leading to memory distortions. My research examines different ways in which our memory can be distorted. One way is through conjunction errors, where we accidently integrate pieces from different memories, so that the details of what we are remembering are correct, but the combination of those details is wrong. My work also examines why we become more vulnerable to memory distortions as we get older, and has identified many different cognitive changes that might contribute to an increased susceptibility to memory errors with age. If we can understand the ways in which our memory fails us, we can develop methods to enhance the accuracy of what we remember.

Relevant publications:

Factors that influence the generation of autobiographical memory conjunction errors

Devitt, A.L., Monk-Fromont, E., Schacter, D.L., & Addis, D.R. (2016). Memory, 24, 204–222.

Autobiographical memory conjunction errors in younger and older adults: Evidence for a role of inhibitory ability

Devitt, A.L., Tippett, L.J., Schacter, D.L., & Addis, D.R. (2016). Psychology and Aging, 31(8), 927–942.

False memories with age: neural and cognitive underpinnings

Devitt, A.L., & Schacter, D.L. (2016). Neuropsychologia, 91, 346–359.

Adaptive constructive processes: An episodic specificity induction impacts false recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

Thakral, P.P., Madore, K.P., Devitt, A.L., & Schacter, D.L. (2019). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.