The common effect of value on prioritized memory and category representation

The way we represent categories depends on both the frequency and value of the category’s members. Thus, for instance, the “prototype” of a category tends to have especially common and valuable features. Notably, recent research on memory suggests that we tend to prioritize memory for frequent and valuable things. Although work on conceptual representation and work on prioritized memory have thus far proceeded almost entirely independently, the patterns of existing findings provide evidence for a link between these two phenomena. In particular, these patterns provide evidence for the hypothesis that the impact of value on prioritized memory explains the impact of value on conceptual representation.