Thanks, and agreed, I think our findings fit squarely with your ideas!

Thanks!

Thanks, Q!

In general, our work suggests that perhaps one reason why we maintain so many seemingly unnecessary details is to construct new preferences as they are needed, allowing us to flexibly adapt to changing goals.

This latter result comes from a new experiment added since our preprint (doi.org/10.1101/2025...), where we also find that people consistently use episodic memory this way when faced with an arbitrary number of features and episodes.


The preprint is up-to-date, in case you run into a paywall!

i) people generally use episodic memories in this way

ii) they mainly do so when future task demands are uncertain

iii) they store “backup” episodes to help if irrelevant details later become relevant

iv) people with more efficient retrieval strategies make better choices

Episodic memory allows us to store individual experiences in high fidelity. Why?

One reason may be to enable flexible behavior: we can reuse whichever details from our memories become relevant for new decisions and goals.

We tested this idea and found that…

the paper looks cool, excited to dig in!