I remember therefore I am: Episodic memory retrieval and self-reported trait empathy judgments in young and older adults and individuals with medial temporal lobe excisions

Sawczak, Caspian; McAndrews, Mary Pat; O’Connor, Brendan Bo; Fowler, Zoë; Moscovitch, Morris

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105124

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…These relations were confirmed experimentally with different subject groups (young and old people, patients with temporal lobe excisions due to epilepsy; Sawczak et al, 2022).…”

Section: Episodic-autobiographical Memorymentioning

confidence: 57%

“…So, as an example, if an event is encoded in a euphoric mood and in a social context during a party, it is later retrieved most likely and in similar detail, if the person again is euphoric and in the midst of a joyful party. These relations were confirmed experimentally with different subject groups (young and old people, patients with temporal lobe excisions due to epilepsy; Sawczak et al, 2022).…”

Section: The Memory Systemsmentioning

confidence: 68%

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Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

Markowitsch

Staniloiu

2022

WIRES Cognitive Science

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Autobiographical‐episodic memory is considered to be the most complex of the five long‐term memory systems. It is autonoetic, which means, self‐reflective, relies on emotional colorization, and needs the features of place and time; it allows mental time traveling. Compared to the other four long‐term memory systems—procedural memory, priming, perceptual, and semantic memory—it develops the latest in phylogeny and ontogeny, and is the most vulnerable of the five systems, being easily impaired by brain damage and psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, it is characterized by its fragility and proneness to distortion due to environmental influences and subsequent information. On the brain level, a distinction has to be made between memory encoding and consolidating, memory storage, and memory retrieval. For encoding, structures of the limbic system, with the hippocampus in its center, are crucial, for storage of widespread cortical networks, and for retrieval again a distributed recollection network, in which the prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role, is engaged. Brain damage and psychiatric diseases can lead to what is called “focal retrograde amnesia.” In this context, the clinical picture of dissociative or functional or psychogenic amnesia is central, as it may result in autobiographical‐emotional amnesia of the total past with the consequence of an impairment of the self as well. The social environment therefore can have a major impact on the brain and on autobiographical‐episodic memory processing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory

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“…These relations were confirmed experimentally with different subject groups (young and old people, patients with temporal lobe excisions due to epilepsy; Sawczak et al, 2022).…”

Section: Episodic-autobiographical Memorymentioning

confidence: 57%

Section: The Memory Systemsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

Markowitsch

Staniloiu

2022

WIRES Cognitive Science

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“…The importance of episodic simulations in guiding empathic responding and prosocial behaviors has been well documented by prior research showing a link between forming episodic simulations of helping behavior, affective empathy, and the willingness to help a person in need (Gaesser et al, , 2019Ryan et al, 2023;Sawczak et al, 2022). However, another type of episodic simulation-and a more natural starting point for empathy-that might affect empathic responding is to imagine another person's distressing scenario.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From memory to motivation: Probing the relationship between episodic simulation, empathy, and helping intentions.

Gregory,

Bartz,

O'Connor

et al. 2024

Emotion

Self Cite

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Research has documented a strong link between constructing episodic simulations-vivid imaginations of specific events-and empathy. To date, most studies have used episodic simulations of helping someone to facilitate affective empathy and promote helping intentions, but have not studied how episodic simulations of another's distressing situation affect empathy. Moreover, affective empathy encompasses both personal distress (i.e., an egocentric experience of distress in response to another's circumstances) and empathic concern (i.e., compassion for another), but we do not know how episodic simulations affect each component. To address these questions, we ran three experiments testing how different episodic simulations influenced personal distress and empathic concern, and thereby willingness to help. In Experiment 1 (N = 216), we found that participants who constructed episodic simulations of another's situation reported increased personal distress (but not empathic concern) and increased helping intentions compared to a control group; additional analyses revealed that personal distress mediated the simulation effect on helping. Furthermore, in Experiment 2 (N = 213), we contrasted episodic simulation of helping versus the distressing scenario; we found no differences in personal distress or helping intentions, but simulating helping led to higher empathic concern. Experiment 3 (N = 571) included both simulation conditions and a control condition; we fully replicated our findings, additionally showing that simulating a helping interaction increased personal distress, empathic concern, and helping intentions relative to the control condition, which consisted of prior work. Taken together, our work illustrates how distinct forms of episodic simulation differentially guide empathic responding and highlights the importance of personal distress in motivating helping.

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“…The experimental group was found to produce more self-defining statements compared to the control group, suggesting that retrograde memory boosted self-reflection. Sawczak et al ( 2022 ) found that young healthy participants rated themselves as more empathetic when cued with episodes in which they behaved as empathetic, an effect that was reduced in participants with weaker episodic memory capacity (older adults and patients with temporal lobes damage). Interestingly, Klein and colleagues found that although performing trait judgments did not generally prime episodes in which participants displayed the trait in question (Klein and Loftus 1993 ; Klein et al 2002a , b ), trait-consistent episodes were found to be consulted while self-reflecting on “ambiguous” traits, that is, those people were not certain to possess, and therefore, no established (semanticized) summary for that trait existed in memory (Klein et al 1993 ; Babey et al 1998 ; Klein and Lax 2010 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retrograde amnesia abolishes the self-reference effect in anterograde memory

Stendardi

Luca

Gambino³

et al. 2023

Exp Brain Res

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Is retrograde amnesia associated with an ability to know who we are and imagine what we will be like in the future? To answer this question, we had S.G., a patient with focal retrograde amnesia following hypoxia, two brain-damaged (control) patients with no retrograde memory deficits, and healthy controls judge whether each of a series of trait adjectives was descriptive of their present self, future self, another person, and that person in the future, and later recognize studied traits among distractors. Healthy controls and control patients were more accurate in recognizing self-related compared to other-related traits, a phenomenon known as the self-reference effect (SRE). This held for both present and future self-views. By contrast, no evidence of (present or future) SRE was observed in SG, who concomitantly showed reduced certainty about his personality traits. These findings indicate that retrograde amnesia can weaken the self-schema and preclude its instantiation during self-related processing.

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I remember therefore I am: Episodic memory retrieval and self-reported trait empathy judgments in young and older adults and individuals with medial temporal lobe excisions

Cited by 7 publications

References 109 publications

Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

From memory to motivation: Probing the relationship between episodic simulation, empathy, and helping intentions.

Retrograde amnesia abolishes the self-reference effect in anterograde memory

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