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Updated: Sep 30, 2025

Using Practice Testing, Public Speaking, and Source Monitoring to Examine the Influences of Learning Strategies and Stress on Episodic Memory
Published on: June 14, 2019
Decision uncertainty during hypothesis testing enhances memory accuracy for incidental information
Xinxu Shen1, Ian C Ballard2, David V Smith1
1Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA.
Abstract:
Humans actively seek information to reduce uncertainty, providing insight on how our decisions causally affect the world. While we know that episodic memories can help support future goal-oriented behaviors, little is known about how hypothesis testing during exploration influences episodic memory. To investigate this question, we designed a hypothesis testing paradigm, in which participants figured out rules to unlock treasure chests. Using this paradigm, we characterized how hypothesis testing during exploration influenced memory for the contents of the treasure chests. We found that there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between decision uncertainty and memory, such that memory was best when decision uncertainty was moderate. An exploratory analysis also showed that surprising outcomes lead to lower memory confidence independent of accuracy. These findings support a model in which moderate decision uncertainty during hypothesis testing enhances incidental information encoding.
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