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This ability, associative inference, is thought to be a key process by which memory guides future behavior. Prior studies have typically instructed participants to use narratives or mental imagery to aid memory of object associations. However, these studies have not explicitly tested the role of narratives, leaving an important question: how crucial are narratives in associative inference, and what role might they play? We used a modified associative inference paradigm to answer these questions. Our design factorially combined two factors during associative encoding: use of narratives, and explicitly linking the two objects. Participants separately learned AB and BC object pairs within ABC triads using four sets of instructions: i) generate narratives to link objects together, ii) generate narratives for objects separately, iii) compare perceptual properties of two objects, and iv) describe perceptual properties of objects individually. We tested participants\u2019 ability to infer AC associations as a function of encoding strategy. Across two experiments, using narratives to actively link objects produced a robust associative memory advantage that persisted across 1-day delay and remained substantial under more stringent retrieval conditions. This benefit was not attributable to a simple linking effect or to surface-level linguistic similarity between stories. A follow-up experiment revealed that this benefit did not generalize to perceptual memory for individual objects; instead, perceptual encoding facilitated perceptual object memory. These results reveal that deep, extended encoding emphasizing either narrativity or perceptual processing can benefit different aspects of retrieval.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2602753123","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,20]],"date-time":"2026-07-20T19:15:07Z","timestamp":1784574907000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Active linking through narratives facilitates associative inference"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"123","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4392-8573","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Rayna S.","family":"Tang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01yc7t268","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis","place":["St. Louis"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ata B.","family":"Karagoz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/024mw5h28","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Department of Psychology, University of Chicago","place":["Chicago"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0121-7618","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Angelique I.","family":"Delarazan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01yc7t268","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis","place":["St. Louis"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zachariah M.","family":"Reagh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01yc7t268","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis","place":["St. Louis"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_1_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.tics.2024.04.003"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cobeha.2020.02.007"},{"key":"e_1_3_4_3_2","volume-title":"Strategies of Discourse Comprehension","author":"van Dijk T. 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