Spontaneous associative thought facilitates scene-gist memory

Spontaneous associative processes (e.g., mind wandering, spontaneous memory recollection) are prevalent in everyday life, yet their influence on perceptual memory is under debate. Given that scene perception involves extraction of contextual associations, we hypothesized that associative thought would enhance scene memory by promoting encoding of contextual associations. In an online experiment (n=75), participants viewed scenes, and after each scene presentation participants either generated chained-free associations (associative processing), or, as control, listed words that begin with a specific letter (phonological processing). Scene memory was tested after an intermediate creativity task, which is also shown to rely on associative processes. Results revealed that associative thought, regardless of the conceptual distances involved, enhanced scene-gist memory, but hampered memory of scene details, implying that associative thought facilitates contextual encoding. At the same time, conceptual distances in the semantic spaces in scene-based associations were positively correlated with creativity, extending the creativity-associativity link to the scene-based domain.