Do Confusions between Experiences influence Retrospective Evaluation?

While there is good evidence that memory retrieval plays a role in the retrospective evaluation of past experiences, this evidence tends to be based on idealised scenarios where a single, isolated experience is evaluated. In everyday life, experiences can occur interwoven with others, leading to the potential for confusions between events that may impact on memory-based retrospective evaluation. To examine whether confusions between sources influence retrospective evaluation, we presented participants with interleaved sequences of affective words where the overall valence of each sequence was either positive or negative, and post-cued evaluation of a single target sequence using the colour the sequence was presented in. While evaluation was consistent with the overall valence of the target sequence, no effect of the valence of the non-cued sequence(s) on evaluation was found, suggesting that source memory confusions do not influence retrospective evaluation. Under conditions of increased memory demands, people may rely on more coarse, global information associated with experiences rather than details of specific events that can be recalled during retrospective evaluation.