Prediction of information value influences memory: the effect of predicted and assigned value on memory

We tend to prioritise more valuable information at the expense of less valuable information to optimise the use of our limited memory capacity. Participants better remember information that they judge to be valuable and that they are told is valuable. Using a recognition paradigm, we sought to examine whether predicting the value of art pieces before learning the experimenter assigned value would influence memory and the quality of retrieval. In two experiments, participants made value predictions about various art pieces and then learned the assigned value. At test, participants provided old/new and remember/know judgments and were tested on the exact value. Results revealed that participants' value predictions influenced memory to a greater degree than assigned value, despite assigned value indicating the amount of reward participants would receive. We discuss these findings with regard to strategic and automatic influences of value on memory, as well as in the context of reward prediction errors (a difference in expected and actual reward).