Memory Overlap Shapes General and Specific Memory Differently in Adolescents and Adults
Abstract
Over time we accumulate many interrelated memories which we draw upon to remember both generalities and specifics of our experience. While both aspects of memory improve through childhood, their maturation into adolescence remains poorly understood. Here, we compared how 39 adolescents (12-13 years old) and 36 adults managed differing levels of relatedness (“overlap”) among learned associations to remember shared (general) and unique (specific) features. Across age groups, greater overlap boosted memory for shared features but hindered memory for specifics. However, adolescents showed a reduced benefit of overlap for shared feature memory, suggesting they generalized across related memories differently than adults. Adolescents were also slower than adults to recognize unique features of highly overlapping memories, consistent with prolonged refinement of specific memory. Our results reveal continued maturation of both general and specific memory into adolescence while demonstrating how the overlaps among our experiences shape what we remember.
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