Spatial gist extraction during human memory consolidation.

Theories of memory consolidation suggest that initially rich, vivid memories become more gist-like over time. However, it is unclear whether gist-like representations reflect a loss of detail through degradation or the blending of experiences into statistical averages, and whether the strength of these representations increases, decreases, or remains stable over time. We report three behavioral experiments that address these questions by examining distributional learning during spatial navigation.