Lifetime familiarity cue effects for autobiographical memory.

Recollecting an autobiographical memory requires a cue to initiate processes related to accessing and then elaborating on a past personal experience. Prior work has shown that the familiarity of a cue can influence the autobiographical memory retrieval process. Extending this work, we tested how familiarity accrued from cumulative lifetime exposures associated with the cue-as well as associated semantic knowledge-can affect how we access and remember autobiographical memories.

Involuntary memory signals in the medial temporal lobe.

We highlight recent progress in neuroimaging and neuropsychological research on memory mechanisms in the medial temporal lobe that speaks to the involuntary nature of memory retrieval processes. We suggest that evidence form these studies supports Barzykowski and Moulin's proposal that memory signals involved in experiences of familiarity and déjà vu can be generated in the absence of retrieval intentionality.

Perirhinal cortex automatically tracks multiple types of familiarity regardless of task-relevance.

Perirhinal cortex (PrC) has long been implicated in familiarity assessment for objects and corresponding concepts. However, extant studies have focused mainly on changes in familiarity induced by recent exposure in laboratory settings. There is an increasing appreciation of other types of familiarity signals, in particular graded familiarity accumulated throughout one's lifetime.

Feeling-of-knowing experiences breed curiosity.

A central tenet in theoretical work on metacognition is that retrieval experiences during memory search can exert control over behaviour. States of curiosity, which reflect motivational tendencies to seek out information, may play a critical role in this control function. We conducted two experiments to address this idea, focusing on links between feeling-of knowing (FOK) experiences, memory-search duration, and subsequent information-seeking behaviour.

Deficits in recent but not lifetime familiarity in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

People with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) repeat questions, seemingly without any sense of familiarity (i.e., recognition of prior occurrence without recollection of episodic context).

Global matching and fluency attribution in familiarity assessment.

In the integrative memory model proposed by Bastin et al., familiarity is thought to arise from attribution of fluency signals. We suggest that, from a computational and anatomical perspective, this conceptualization converges with a global-matching account of familiarity assessment.

Late positive complex in event-related potentials tracks memory signals when they are decision relevant.

The Late Positive Complex (LPC) is an Event-Related Potential (ERP) consistently observed in recognition-memory paradigms. In the present study, we investigated whether the LPC tracks the strength of multiple types of memory signals, and whether it does so in a decision dependent manner. For this purpose, we employed judgements of cumulative lifetime exposure to object concepts, and judgements of cumulative recent exposure (i.