Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The mind is a prediction machine, using prior experiences and current information to constantly make predictions aboutthe future. This feature of the cognitive system has numerous consequences for long-term memory. Here, we are interestedin the effects these predictions have on memory when invalidated (i.e., prediction errors) during social interactions witheither similar or dissimilar social sources. We designed an experiment in which both similar and dissimilar social sources(speakers) recounted experiences similar with those of the listeners but with a different outcome than those of the listeners.We measured participants memory for both their own and the two social sources experiences. In two experiments, we foundthat context-based prediction errors triggered during social interactions dont affect the listeners memory for their ownexperiences but decrease the listeners memory for the similar speakers experiences compared to the dissimilar speakersexperiences. This finding has important implications for close relationships.