Specificity and detail in autobiographical memory retrieval: a multi-site (re)investigation

Hallford, David John; Barry, Tom J.; Belmans, Eline; Raes, Filip; Dax, Samantha; Nishiguchi, Yuki; Takano, Keisuke

doi:10.1080/09658211.2020.1838548

Cited by 25 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although the findings of Study 2 suggested that detail may be more important than specificity, Study 3 indicated that there are unique effects of specificity and detail in influencing the emotional support that is offered to others and our willingness to collaborate with them. These findings support suggestions that autobiographical memory specificity and detailedness are related but distinct constructs (Hallford et al, 2021; Levine et al, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…It is possible that people may prefer profiles simply because they share more detailed memories (Collins & Miller, 1994) and not necessarily because they share specific memories. This is important because specific memories typically include more episodic detail than nonspecific memories (Hallford et al, 2021). Nevertheless, specificity and detail are separable constructs; a person could retrieve a specific memory that is high in sensory–perceptual detail (e.g., I was upset when reading my ex-partner’s email last Friday while sitting on the sofa in my house ) or low in such detail (e.g., I was upset when reading an email last Friday ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The sharing of autobiographical memories elicits social support.

Barry¹,

Boddez²,

Chiu³

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine whether and how the autobiographical memories that we share can influence the social support that people offer us. Study 1 examined whether sharing specific (e.g., I was upset when reading my ex-partner’s email last Friday) versus nonspecific (e.g., I was upset) memories influences support giving. Studies 2 and 3 additionally examined the effects of episodic detail (i.e., who, what, where) and specificity on support. Participants offered more support to (hypothetical) profiles that shared specific, compared to nonspecific, memories, but these effects were less consistent than those for memory detail. Participants offered more support to profiles that shared memories that were high, compared to low, in detail. Findings were more consistent for the effects of memory detail on emotional support than instrumental support. These findings support the social function of autobiographical memory and suggest one pathway through which autobiographical memory may influence the help we receive.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The sharing of autobiographical memories elicits social support.

Barry¹,

Boddez²,

Chiu³

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This finding is consistent with other studies showing an association between executive function and AM specificity [7,20]. The other study examining the relationship between specificity and detail found a medium positive correlation between the two, concluding that the two constructs are related but separable [21]. Both studies suggest that tasks measuring specificity and detail are not interchangeable; one possible reason for inconsistency in the ageing literature, therefore, is that these two measures are not equally sensitive to ageing.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Age effects in autobiographical memory depend on the measure

Mair

Poirier

2021

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studies examining age effects in autobiographical memory have produced inconsistent results. This study examined whether a set of typical autobiographical memory measures produced equivalent results in a single participant sample. Five memory tests (everyday memory, autobiographical memory from the past year, autobiographical memory from age 11–17, word-cued autobiographical memory, and word-list recall) were administered in a single sample of young and older adults. There was significant variance in the tests’ sensitivity to age: word-cued autobiographical memory produced the largest deficit in older adults, similar in magnitude to word-list recall. In contrast, older adults performed comparatively well on the other measures. The pattern of findings was broadly consistent with the results of previous investigations, suggesting that (1) the results of the different AM tasks are reliable, and (2) variable age effects in the autobiographical memory literature are at least partly due to the use of different tasks, which cannot be considered interchangeable measures of autobiographical memory ability. The results are also consistent with recent work dissociating measures of specificity and detail in autobiographical memory, and suggest that specificity is particularly sensitive to ageing. In contrast, detail is less sensitive to ageing, but is influenced by retention interval and event type. The extent to which retention interval and event type interact with age remains unclear; further research using specially designed autobiographical memory tasks could resolve this issue.

show abstract

“…No significant correlation between anxiety and EFT specificity was identified, and cue valence was not found to be a significant moderator of the correlation between anxiety and EFT specificity. This is unexpected, given that EFT specificity is closely associated with autobiographical memory specificity (Schacter, Addis & Buckner, 2007;Szpunar, 2010) which itself is typically correlated with EFT details (Hallford et al, 2021). It is possible that this non-significant finding might be attributable to EFT rater type.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%