Interactive influences of prior knowledge on episodic memory

Many species adapt to their environments by accruing relevant knowledge and expertise, which in turn shapes memory formation. Human experts remember items in their field better than novices, but different types of knowledge or exposure influence memory in different ways. By examining both expert knowledge for bird species and ecological data on environmental prevalence, we sought to disentangle the contributions of specific knowledge about individual items from those of conceptual familiarity due to prior exposure. Conceptually oriented memory in experts was highest for identifiable species. When lacking this specific knowledge, however, experts tended to mistakenly remember studying environmentally common vs. environmentally uncommon species, with no comparable effect in novices. Perceptually oriented memory showed a smaller expertise advantage and less influence from species-level knowledge. Thus, expert memory benefits more from conceptual abstraction but is shaped by multiple types of experience-specific knowledge and prior exposure-revealing a complex relationship between semantic and episodic memory signals.