Confirming a hunch? Using study choices to understand the mechanisms of memory-based inference.

Memory-based inference involves forming connections across separate but related experiences to derive new knowledge, and it allows us to ‘read between the lines’ of our experiences to support novel decision-making. The mechanisms underlying memory-based inferences have been debated. Some propose that individuals make inferences spontaneously during learning of episodes with overlapping elements, forming mnemonic links between indirectly related elements so that they can be easily retrieved at the time of inferential decision-making. Others propose that overlapping experiences are encoded separately and jointly retrieved to make inferences on-the-fly at the time of decision-making. Across two experiments, we used individuals’ choices of what information to study or re-study to investigate the extent to which people seek to confirm the relationship between indirectly associated pieces of information as an indicator that indirect inference relationships were represented distinctly from direct experiences. Using an acquired equivalence paradigm with a novel study choice phase, we found relatively low inference rates, and that participants initially chose to re-study well-learned information. However, participants used subsequent study opportunities to learn about indirect relationships not directly presented during study. Thus, there was little evidence of spontaneous inference during initial learning, but inferential learning increased over the course of a self-directed study session. This study provides insight into the mechanisms of memory-based inference and contributes to the metacognitive literature by expanding our understanding of how individuals make study choices within an inference learning task.