The time window of reconsolidation: A replication

Reconsolidation is a process by which a consolidated memory that has been destabilized by reactivation is updated, strengthened, or weakened by the restabilization of the trace. A critical assumption of the reconsolidation theory is that reconsolidation is a time-dependent process. Hupbach, Gomez, Hardt, and Nadel (2007, Learning & Memory, 14, 47-53) conducted a set of experiments demonstrating that memory updating is only found when the reconsolidation process has time to complete. This finding strengthens reconsolidation theory and poses a challenge to other accounts of memory updating (e.g., context and interference accounts). Because this finding is so critical to the reconsolidation theory, we attempted to directly replicate these experiments, which showed memory updating in a 3-day paradigm (when reconsolidation has time to complete), but not in a 2-day paradigm (when reconsolidation does not have time to complete). We replicated these results, thereby bolstering the reconsolidation theory of memory updating.