Agency enhances temporal order memory in an interactive exploration game.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human Memory

Background:

• Agency is known to improve episodic memory.
• Existing memory paradigms often use simple list-learning tasks, limiting the study of associative memory, like binding items into spatial and temporal contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of agency in associative memory formation.
• To differentiate agentive from passive memory encoding.
• To assess how agency influences memory for item features, spatial location, and temporal order.

Main Methods:

• Two studies were conducted, comparing agentive and passive memory encoding.
• Agentive participants played a text-based game simulating object exploration.
• Passive participants' trajectories were yoked to agentive participants to equalize stimulus exposure.

Main Results:

• No significant differences were found in memory for item descriptions or spatial location between groups.
• A notable enhancement in temporal order memory was observed in the agentive group across both samples.
• Agency facilitated the binding of items into a temporal context.

Conclusions:

• Agency plays a crucial role in enhancing temporal order memory.
• Findings support a self-directed learning model where agency aids in creating sequential narratives.
• Agency facilitates the sequential binding of information, improving narrative memory.