Learned interval time facilitates associate memory retrieval

The extent to which time is represented in memory remains underinvestigated. We designed a time paired associate task (TPAT) in which participants implicitly learned cue–time–target associations between cue–target pairs and specific cue–target intervals. During subsequent memory testing, participants showed increased accuracy of identifying matching cue–target pairs if the time interval during testing matched the implicitly learned interval. A control experiment showed that participants had no explicit knowledge about the cue–time associations. We suggest that “elapsed time” can act as a temporal mnemonic associate that can facilitate retrieval of events associated in memory.