Forgotten or never consciously processed? A comparison of immediate and delayed recall of driving details

Abstract

After driving a familiar route, people often have a poor memory of the drive. To investigate how quickly people forget information from an everyday drive we asked participants (n = 38) to take a 20-min simulated drive on familiar local roads and after a delay, answer questions about what happened and what they saw at four locations. We questioned drivers either immediately (<1 s), 20 s or 45 s after driving through each location, or at the end of the drive. Recall accuracy remained high when drivers were questioned immediately and at delays of 20 s and 45 s, but was significantly poorer when drivers were questioned at the end of the drive. Recall accuracy for stopping at a location did not decrease regardless of delay. The results add to our knowledge about the role of attention and memory for highly practised and largely automatic skills, such as everyday driving.