The organisation of spatial and temporal relations in memory

ABSTRACT

Episodic memories are comprised of details of “where” and “when”; spatial and temporal relations, respectively. However, evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies has provided mixed interpretations about how memories for spatial and temporal relations are organised—they may be hierarchical, fully interactive, or independent. In the current study, we examined the interaction of memory for spatial and temporal relations. Using explicit reports and eye-tracking, we assessed younger and older adults’ memory for spatial and temporal relations of objects that were presented singly across time in unique spatial locations. Explicit change detection of spatial relations was affected by a change in temporal relations, but explicit change detection of temporal relations was not affected by a change in spatial relations. Younger and older adults showed eye movement evidence of incidental memory for temporal relations, but only younger adults showed eye movement evidence of incidental memory for spatial relations. Together, these findings point towards a hierarchical organisation of relational memory. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the neural mechanisms that may support such a hierarchical organisation of memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Relational memory
• spatial and temporal relations
• eye movements
• ageing
• short-term memory

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Doug McQuiggan for assistance in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) [grant number MOP126003]; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [grant number 482639]. JDR and MDB are supported by the Canada Research Chairs Foundation. MDB is supported by a Scholar Award from the James S McDonnell Foundation. RRII is supported by a graduate fellowship from NSERC.