Priming autobiographical memories: How recalling the past may affect everyday forms of autobiographical remembering

The priming effect of presleep conscious thoughts on dreams.

“…As empirical evidence suggests that different kinds of waking-life experiences can prime subsequent autobiographical memories (e.g., Mace & Unlu, 2020; Mace et al, 2019), the presleep conscious thoughts contain autobiographical memories primed by previous waking-life experiences. The priming effect may be last for a long time (e.g., Mace & Hidalgo, 2022; Mace & Petersen, 2020). According to Domhoff (2019), there was continuity between waking time and dreaming time, so the priming effect of a waking-life experience on autobiographical memories may continue during subsequent dreaming time.…”

“…It has been found that daily stimuli (semantic stimuli or autobiographical stimuli) can prime autobiographical memories (e.g., Mace et al, 2019), and the time for it can last for a long time (e.g., Mace & Hidalgo, 2022; Mace & Petersen, 2020).…”

Semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming causes involuntary autobiographical memory production: The effects of single and multiple prime presentations

“…While it seems more likely that involuntary memory production would be affected by priming more than voluntary memory production, as the latter is typically goal oriented, Mace et al (2019) argued that there may be a few circumstances where voluntary remembering may be influenced by priming. For example, reminiscing about the past may not always be goal oriented, except to recall memories from a particular time period, and it may be in these circumstances where priming may have an impact (e.g., see Mace & Clevinger, 2013;Mace & Petersen, 2020, as well as further discussion in Mace et al, 2019). With respect to the present results, one would expect that priming's effect in reminiscence recall should be further enhanced by prime repetition, as shown here, and by this variable's long history in explicit memory enhancement.…”

“…This processing event will activate a pool of related autobiographical memories, consisting of both general autobiographical memories (e.g., I had a dog when I was little; my sister has dogs; experientially based images of dogs, e.g., my dog), as well as specific autobiographical memories (i.e., episodic memories, e.g., taking my dog for a walk; playing with my sisters dogs). Given that such autobiographical knowledge is likely to remain activated for a significant period of time (days to perhaps weeks, e.g., Mace, 2005;Mace & Hidalgo, 2022;Mace & Petersen, 2020), such activations have the potential of entering consciousness as involuntary memories when cues cause further activation in the system. For example, if one hears a dog bark or sees someone walking or playing with a dog, these cues could induce the spontaneous retrieval of any of the associated autobiographical memories (e.g., I had a dog when I was little; playing with my sister's dogs).…”