Agency as a Bridge to Form Associative Memories

The perception of agency occurs when individuals feel their decisions exert control over their environment. While agency can increase memory for items, most real-life situations are more complex. The decisions we make not only affect the item we act upon, but all the other items in direct proximity of our decisions. Here, we examined how an individuals agency to influence a situation affects their ability to learn associations between items that occur prior to and after making a decision. In our paradigm, participants were told they were playing a game show where they had to help a trial unique contestant choose between three doors. On agency trials, participants were allowed to pick any door they wanted. On forced-choice trials, participants were instructed to select a door that was highlighted. They then saw the outcome, a prize that was behind the selected door. Across two studies, participants show enhanced memory for contestants they saw in agency vs forced-choice trials. Memory benefits also extended to contestant - door and door - prize associations in both studies. Study 2 found this effect in the contestant - prize association. Notably, we found that agency also shaped the representation of memories such that they were stored as integrated sequences rather than individual relational pairs. Together, these data suggest agency over a situation leads to enhanced memory for all items in that situation. This enhanced binding for items may be occurring by the formation of causal links when an individual has agency over their learning environment.