Weak and strong memories are equally reactivated during counterfactual learning, but only weak memories are modified
- 1Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003 USA
- 2Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 USA
- 3Department of Clinical Research, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962 USA
Abstract
Adaptively updating memories about familiar others is an important social skill. Here, we examined whether strong or weak memories encoded in a social learning task are more prone to updating with new information when they are violated. Participants viewed well-known fictional characters’ emotional reactions to food items either repeatedly or only once. They then studied new events where some characters exhibited unexpected emotions to the same food items, violating initial memories. We found that when violated, strong existing memories, compared to weak memories, led to worse recall of the new, conflicting information, suggesting the resistance of strong memories to updating. Further, using a novel behavioral metric as a proxy for memory reactivation, we assessed the mechanistic role of reactivation in the updating of strong and weak memories. We showed that when encountering conflicting information, instead of reflecting their relative encoding strength, reactivation of weak memories reached a level similar to that of strong memories. Meanwhile, strong memories that were more reactivated showed higher likelihood to incorporate new information. Together, our findings provide insights into how existing social memories integrate with new information, a process shaped by memory strength and reactivation during new learning.
Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7.
Related
- Post-Learning Reactivation of Memories for Naturalistic Continuous Experiences
- Related memories exhibit interference during learning in adults but later retrieval in children
- Enhancing working memories using repetitive TMS
- Human position sense based on memories is not proprioception
- Diurnal rhythmicity modulates self-blaming behaviours and neural processing of autobiographical guilt memories in the trait-like and state-like manner
BibTeX
@article{yu2026weak,
title = {{Weak and strong memories are equally reactivated during counterfactual learning, but only weak memories are modified}},
author = {Wangjing Yu and Lila Davachi},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Weak and strong memories are equally reactivated during counterfactual learning, but only weak memories are modified
AU - Wangjing Yu
AU - Lila Davachi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/10
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7
AB - Adaptively updating memories about familiar others is an important social skill. Here, we examined whether strong or weak memories encoded in a social learning task are more prone to updating with new information when they are violated. Participants viewed well-known fictional characters’ emotional reactions to food items either repeatedly or only once. They then studied new events where some characters exhibited unexpected emotions to the same food items, violating initial memories. We found that when violated, strong existing memories, compared to weak memories, led to worse recall of the new, conflicting information, suggesting the resistance of strong memories to updating. Further, using a novel behavioral metric as a proxy for memory reactivation, we assessed the mechanistic role of reactivation in the updating of strong and weak memories. We showed that when encountering conflicting information, instead of reflecting their relative encoding strength, reactivation of weak memories reached a level similar to that of strong memories. Meanwhile, strong memories that were more reactivated showed higher likelihood to incorporate new information. Together, our findings provide insights into how existing social memories integrate with new information, a process shaped by memory strength and reactivation during new learning. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-65066-7.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -