Towards a Generalized Bayesian Model of Reconstructive Memory

Abstract Prior knowledge has long been known to shape reconstruction from memory. An individual stimulus from a category is often remembered to be closer to the center of that category than its true location. This effect, together with more complex memory effects that involve prior knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction, has been successfully explained by the Category Adjustment Model (CAM; Huttenlocher et al. 2000) and its extensions. However, recent experimental results diverge from CAM’s predictions showing that reconstructive memory for atypical category examples is influenced by the category center less than that of typical category examples. To unify these findings, we propose a generalized Bayesian model of reconstructive memory, called the generalized CAM model (g-CAM). We demonstrate through simulations that g-CAM can account for previously known effects of reconstructive memory, while additionally capturing recent empirical findings involving atypical category examples.