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Honest reward enhances memory

29.06.2020

One of the factors that influence memory is reward. Everything that is associated with reward is remembered especially well, but although the positive effect of reward on memory has long been known, it is not entirely clear how long such an effect lasts and how the psychological mechanism that links reward and memory works in detail. To find out, researchers from the University of Geneva, the University of Toronto and the Weizmann Institute set up an experiment in which about three dozen volunteers had to point out how certain characters and certain objects are related.

It looked like this: a person was shown a character and two items to choose from, and it was necessary to say which item corresponds to the character. Here it was possible either to guess or not to guess, and for each correct answer the participant in the experiment received a point, but if he did not guess, then the point was lost; earned points then turned into real money. Obviously, the researchers could arbitrarily determine how well a person would play: he was allowed to guess almost everything, or almost nothing, or fifty-fifty.

Twenty minutes after the first round, it was necessary to pass the second - again it was required to guess the associations between the character and objects in order to earn additional points. But now the participants in the experiment could remember which connections were right and which were wrong - after all, they had just played it. If the reward enhances memory, then one would expect those who received the most money in the first round to play best in the second round - they should remember the connections between the pictures better than others.

The participants of the experiment played the game while in the magnetic resonance imaging machine - so they managed to see that, remembering the associations, the brain connected not only the usual memory center of the hippocampus, but also another area that is part of the reinforcement system and which is responsible for the pleasure of the reward and for motivation. However, according to an article in Nature Communications, the best memory performers were those who received a moderate reward, not the smallest, but not the largest. Too easy a game, too easy a reward did not motivate the brain to memorize.

Memory is enhanced by an honest reward - that is, from one for which some effort was really expended, and not from one that was almost for nothing.

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