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Mnemonic traits differentially predict event recall across short and long delay

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Catalina Yang¹ (), Quynh Nguyen¹, Nicole Yuen¹, Van Ngo¹, Ethina Islam¹, Morgan Barense^1,2, Katherine Duncan¹; ¹University of Toronto, ²Rotman Research Institute

People vary widely in how they remember the past. Some tend to recall events through vivid sensory detail, whereas others recall in more conceptual and semantic ways. These individual differences are thought to reflect stable mnemonic traits. The Survey of Autobiographical Memory (SAM) is commonly used to assess such trait-level memory abilities. However, findings linking SAM to objective measures of episodic memory have been mixed, partly because prior studies typically used autobiographical memories that are difficult to verify or laboratory stimuli lacking episodic richness. These methods limit our understanding of how SAM relate to the memory content and its changes across time. We addresses these gaps by investigating whether self-reported episodic memory abilities predicts both the quality and quantity of a person’s episodic memories for naturalistic video stimuli and changes in retention over short (30-min) versus long delays (2-week). Participants (n = 60/96 collected) completed the SAM and additional metacognitive questionnaires, then recalled narrative videos in two structured interviews after short and long delays. We analyzed interview transcripts using a mixed automated-manual scoring pipeline that leveraged a LLM to categorize memory details (central vs. peripheral), whereas human raters evaluated detail accuracy. In preliminary analyses, higher SAM–Episodic scores predicted superior short-delay recall but steeper forgetting across time, whereas lower scores predicted less detailed but more stable memories. Additionally, although visual imagery ability (VVIQ) was strongly correlated with SAM–Episodic scores, visual imagery alone did not predict memory. These findings clarify how mnemonic traits influence episodic memories retention and recall over time.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic