Most people have recounted a story or joke to someone only to realize part of the way through that they have already told this person. Remembering to whom we tell what, a process we term "destination memory," has important social ramifications. In a series of experiments using a novel paradigm, we have begun to delineate the core features of destination memory, including that destination memory is more fallible than source memory. Here, we present a theoretical framework that explains relative deficiencies in terms of poor environmental integration of outgoing information.

Hebb Award Abstract

Consider a common social interaction: Two people must each attend to and remember the other person’s behaviour while also keeping track of their own responses. For example, employees must remember who assigned them particular tasks whereas supervisors need to remember to whom they have told specific information so that they can later assess task completion. The processes involved in remembering the source of information constitute “source memory”; we term the processes involved in remembering the destination of information “destination memory”. Despite intensive investigation of source memory, there has been little to no research regarding destination memory. In a series of experiments using a new paradigm, we have begun to delineate the core features of destination memory.

Our first experiment corroborated complaints of destination memory failures: Adults have very poor destination memory when compared to memory for the information they tell or the person to whom they tell the information. Although source and destination memory both are part of the episodic memory system, they are fundamentally different in terms of the direction of information transfer—“input” in the case of source memory and “output” in the case of destination memory. Previous research suggests that output events undergo a shallower contextualization (i.e., integration of an item with its external context) than do input events. If the use of context underlies the success of episodic memory, then it would be anticipated that destination memory would be worse than source memory. Experiment 2 directly contrasted source and destination memory and found evidence for this hypothesis: Destination memory was over 20% more error-prone than source memory. Experiment 3 and 4 yielded further support for the relatively weak integration of external context (i.e., the person one is speaking to) and the information that is being told. In Experiment 3, we increased destination memory errors by reducing contextualization whereas, in Experiment 4, we decreased destination memory errors by enhancing contextual integration.

Destination memory appears to be much more fallible than source memory, which we attribute to differences in attention at encoding. In source memory, the source of the information is integrated with the environmental context whereas, in destination memory, the focus is internal and is less integrated with the information transmitted. Therefore, the way in which information is transferred does matter –- at least in terms of memory.