Involuntary autobiographical memories in and outside the laboratory: How different are they from voluntary autobiographical memories?

Abstract

Original article can be found at: http://www.psychonomic.org/ Copyright Psychonomic Society. DOI: 10.3758/MC.36.5.920Two studies compared the characteristics and retrieval times of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory under controlled laboratory conditions. A new laboratory task of involuntary autobiographical memories involved detecting vertical lines in a stream of stimuli with horizontal lines (an undemanding vigilance task) and recording any involuntary memories during the session. The majority of these memories were reported as being triggered by irrelevant cue-phrases presented on the screen. Voluntary autobiographical memories were sampled via a standard word-cue method in Session 2. The results showed that involuntary memories were more specific and retrieved significantly faster than voluntary memories. They were also more likely to be triggered by negative cues while cue valence did not have any effect on the number of voluntary memories. Furthermore, laboratory involuntary memories did not differ from naturalistic involuntary memories recorded in a diary by the same participants (Study 2). Taken together, these results have important implications for current theories of autobiographical memory and open up interesting avenues for future research

Autobiographical memory specificity in response to verbal and pictorial cues in clinical depression

“…This process places significant demands on central executive resources (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Involuntary memories are retrieved more rapidly (around two seconds compared to around ten seconds for generative retrieval) and tend to be more specific than voluntary memories (Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2011;Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008;Watson, Berntsen, Kuyken & Watkins, 2013). Depressed individuals exhibit reduced specificity during voluntary retrieval (Sumner, 2012;Williams et al, 2007) but not involuntary (Watson et al, 2013).…”

Manipulating cues in mind wandering: Verbal cues affect the frequency and the temporal focus of mind wandering

“…Participants completed a modified version of the computer-based vigilance task developed by Schlagman and Kvavilashvili (2008) and already used in previous studies (Barzykowski & Niedzẃieńska, 2016;Vannucci et al, 2014;Vannucci, Pelagatti, Hanczakowski, Mazzoni, & Rossi Paccani, 2015). The task consisted of 600 trials, presented in a fixed order, each remaining on the screen for 1.5 sec.…”

“…In one of the most successful paradigms, developed by Schlagman and Kvavilashvili (2008) to assess IAMs in a laboratory setting, participants are exposed to a long sequence of trials of mostly horizontal lines and have to detect an occasional target (i.e., vertical lines), while being simultaneously exposed to irrelevant cue-words, presented in the center of each slide (i.e., 'relaxing on a beach' or 'crossing the street'). To assess the frequency of IAMs, both self-caught (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008) or probe-caught (Vannucci, Batool, Pelagatti, & Mazzoni, 2014) procedures have been used in the studies.…”

“…To assess the frequency of IAMs, both self-caught (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008) or probe-caught (Vannucci, Batool, Pelagatti, & Mazzoni, 2014) procedures have been used in the studies. This paradigm elicits a fair amount of IAMs, the majority of which (85% in the original study) are reported as being triggered by the word-cues on the screen.…”

“…In the Verbal-cues condition, cue words (e.g., "stainless steel", "long hair", "paper bag") in 18-CPI Arial font were shown in the middle of the image on 108 (18%) trials. The words that served as cues were selected from the pool of 800 word-phrases developed by Schlagman and Kvavilashvili (2008) and adapted to the Italian sample (for more details on the Italian adaptation, see Vannucci et al, 2015). Temporally-oriented word-phrases (e.g., "old family photos", "forgotten appointment") were not included in the sample and, when necessary, the words were slightly modified to make them emotionally neutral (e.g., "jealous behaviour" was replaced by "behaviour").…”