The Centrality of Event Scale (CES) was introduced to examine the extent to which a traumatic or stressful event is perceived as central to an individual's identity and life story, and how this relates to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. In addition, the CES has been examined in relation to a range of other conditions and dispositions. We present a systematic review of the correlates of the CES. Results from 92 publications resulted in 25 measurement categories in the six theoretical domains of trauma, negative affect and distress, autobiographical memory, personality, positive affect, and gender. The mean weighted correlations of the 25 measurement categories ranged from -.17 to .55, with standard errors from .01 to .02, allowing us to distinguish empirically among effects. Consistent with the theoretical motivation for the CES and predictions predating the review, the CES correlated positively with a range of measures, correlating most highly with measures related to trauma, PTSD, grief, and autobiographical memory. The findings show that the CES probes aspects of autobiographical memory of broad relevance to clinical disorders, and with specific implications for theories of PTSD.

The findings are in line with the common-sense model of illness and previous research demonstrating that patient's expectations for recovery and illness perceptions might influence the course after whiplash injury. Illness perceptions and expectations may provide a useful starting point for future interventions and be targeted in the prevention of chronicity.

Severe health anxiety is characterized by intrusive worries about harboring a serious illness.In the present study, 32 patients with severe health anxiety, 32 control participants and a clinical control group of 33 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) reported unprompted and anxiety-related autobiographical memories and episodic future thoughts. Compared to control participants, the patient groups displayed similar patterns in the characteristics of the reported events and regarding the maladaptive cognitive and behavioral strategies used, when the events came to mind. Patients with severe health anxiety reported more events related to their own illness or death than either of the other groups, and exploratory analyses suggested that they were more inclined than OCD patients to check their own bodies when anxiety-related events came to mind.Autobiographical memories and episodic future thoughts have not previously been examined in patients with severe health anxiety, but could play an important role in this disorder.

The Autobiographical Recollection Test (ART;Berntsen et al., 2019) measures individual differences in autobiographical memory. We here examined whether the ART correlates with characteristics of people's specific autobiographical memories. Participants (Ns ≥ 475) completed the ART and rated recollective qualities of autobiographical memories cued by words (Study 1), by positive and negative emotional valence (Study 2), and by future and past temporal direction (Study 3). Scores on the ART consistently correlated with recollective qualities of specific memories and future thoughts, both immediately and after a 1-week delay. The magnitude of these correlations was at the same level as the correlations between individual memory items, underscoring the ability of the ART, as a trait measure to predict ratings of individual memories. The findings support the construct validity of the ART and demonstrate that people's evaluation of their autobiographical memory, in general, is reliably related to how they remember specific events.

To assess the accuracy of an eyewitness testimony, ratings of memory confidence are often used. However, memory accuracy and confidence are rarely studied in relation to individual differences in autobiographical memory. Here, we examined the relationship between memory accuracy, memory confidence, and individual differences in the recollective experience of autobiographical memory, measured by the autobiographical recollection test (ART; Berntsen et al., 2019). Across three experiments, a total of 1,065 Mturk workers completed the ART, watched a simulated event, and completed a forced choice recall test immediately after the encoding (Experiment 1), after a 2-day delay (Experiment 2), or a free recall task (Experiment 3). Finally, participants rated memory confidence. Across the experiments, the ART showed no association with objective accuracy while holding a predictive value of confidence, even when controlling for objective accuracy. The findings have implications for research on metacognitive judgments of memory accuracy and eyewitness testimony.