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Mnemonic Ramping: Exploring the unique temporal dynamics of encoding and retrieval success over time

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 1 - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PST, Salon ABC.

Matthew Dougherty¹ (), Thomas Biba¹, Katherine Duncan¹; ¹University of Toronto

Memory retrieval success is frustratingly variable. This variability may stem from difficulty in sustaining the retrieval mode, which orients attention internally towards reinstated information (Tulving,1983). Reinstatement itself additionally takes time to establish (Dougherty, Patil & Duncan 2025). While second-by-second retrieval variability has been studied, naturalistic retrieval is often more prolonged. Therefore, here we studied how these sources of variability interact to shape our retrieval success across minutes, and the uniqueness of this relationship to retrieval versus tasks with similar attentional and mnemonic demands. Participants completed twelve blocks of associative encoding and retrieval, each varying between 67.5s-99s, intermixed with six blocks each of shape counting and arithmetic (42.5-57.5s) that served as mnemonic distractors and comparators for time-success relationships across externally and internally oriented tasks, respectively. Preliminary data (n=26) demonstrate that retrieval varies significantly over time, with performance decreasing within blocks (p<0.05) despite memory improvements across blocks (p<0.001). This performance decrement was mirrored in the internally oriented arithmetic task (p=0.05), but not in externally oriented shape counting (p=0.99) or encoding (p=0.36), despite similar difficulty. Interestingly, while retrieval performance within a block decreased, retrieval performance was at its lowest on beginning trials (p<0.001) before rapidly ramping up. This effect was mirrored in encoding (p<0.001), but not in either attention task (arithmetic p=0.99, shape counting p=0.97). This pattern of temporal profiles across tasks suggests that (1) it is more challenging to sustain attention to internally than externally generated content and (2) engaging memory-specific processes common to encoding and retrieval takes multiple seconds.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic