Parallel interactive retrieval of item and associative information from event memory

•Memories for events and associations between them are stored in a separable fashion.•Memories for events and their associations are retrieved together in parallel.•During retrieval, matching item and associative information amplify one another.

Memory contains information about individual events (items) and combinations of events (associations). Despite the fundamental importance of this distinction, it remains unclear exactly how these two kinds of information are stored and whether different processes are used to retrieve them. We use both model-independent qualitative properties of response dynamics and quantitative modeling of individuals to address these issues. Item and associative information are not independent and they are retrieved concurrently via interacting processes. During retrieval, matching item and associative information mutually facilitate one another to yield an amplified holistic signal. Modeling of individuals suggests that this kind of facilitation between item and associative retrieval is a ubiquitous feature of human memory.