Why am I remembering this now? Predicting the occurrence of involuntary (spontaneous) episodic memories.

Berntsen, Dorthe; Staugaard, Søren Risløv; Sørensen, Louise Maria Torp

doi:10.1037/a0029128

Cited by 129 publications

(211 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Berntsen, Staugaard, & Sørensen, 2013). For example, increasing the positive affect generated while imagining a scenario during the training may increase the chance that the image later returns as a positive involuntary memory (e.g.…”

Section: Clinical Practices and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Brightening the Day With Flashes of Positive Mental Imagery: A Case Study of an Individual With Depression

Blackwell

Holmes

2017

J Clin Psychol

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This article presents a case example of an individual with current major depression engaging in a positive mental imagery intervention, specifically a computerized cognitive training paradigm involving repeated practice in generating positive imagery in response to ambiguous scenarios. The patient's reported experience of the intervention suggests the potential of the positive imagery intervention to “brighten” everyday life via promoting involuntary “flashes” of positive mental imagery in situations related to the scenarios, with associated beneficial effects on positive affect, future expectations, and behavior. Enhancing this aspect of the training–i.e., involuntary positive imagery in contexts where it is adaptive–may hold particular promise for reducing anhedonic symptoms of depression. Developing simple computerized interventions to increase the experience of positive mental imagery in everyday life could therefore provide a useful addition to the drive to improve treatment outcomes.

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Section: Clinical Practices and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Brightening the Day With Flashes of Positive Mental Imagery: A Case Study of an Individual With Depression

Blackwell

Holmes

2017

J Clin Psychol

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“…One possibility is that cues are more likely to elicit future MTT when they interact with current goal states or that a certain level of cue discriminability is needed . However, further experimentation is required to examine these possibilities (see Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008, for arguments concerning how cues and memory interact in involuntary past MTT; see Berntsen et al, 2013, for manipulations of cueing in relation to activating involuntary episodic memories). Another, but related, question concerns the role of unconscious processes in involuntary future thinking; specifically, the extent to which they are primed by previous thoughts or goals (see Szpunar, 2010).…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anderson et al, 2011;Hintzman, 2011;Kelley & Jacoby, 2000;SteMarie & Jacoby, 1993). Although several studies have induced involuntary autobiographical memories using laboratory techniques (Ball, 2007;Berntsen, Staugaard, & Sørensen, 2013;Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008;Uzer, Lee, & Brown, 2012), to our knowledge, this is the first study to use a laboratory paradigm to examine past and future events that are retrieved voluntarily and involuntarily. In so doing, we attempt to fulfil two aims: (1) to validate a new laboratory method of involuntary MTT and (2) to understand the emotional, representational, and cognitive characteristics of these four mental representation types, especially the phenomenon of involuntary future MTT, which has hitherto been studied using naturalistic methods.…”

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confidence: 99%

Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

2015

Self Cite

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Although involuntary past and future mental time travel (MTT) has been examined outside the laboratory in diary studies, MTT has primarily been studied in the context of laboratory studies using voluntary construction tasks. In this study, we adapted and extended a paradigm previously used to elicit involuntary and voluntary memories (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili in Memory & Cognition, 36, 920-932, 2008). Our aim was -for the first time -to examine involuntary and voluntary future MTT under controlled laboratory conditions. The involuntary task involved a monotonous task that included potential cues for involuntary MTT. Temporal direction was manipulated between participants whereas retrieval mode was manipulated within participants. We replicated robust past-future differences, such as the future positivity bias. Additionally, we replicated key voluntary-involuntary differences: Involuntary future representations had similar characteristics as involuntary memories in that they were elicited faster, were more specific, and garnered more emotional impact than their voluntary counterparts. We also found that the future and past involuntary MTT led to both positive and negative mood impact, and that the valence of the impact was associated with the emotional valence of the event. This study advances scientific understanding of involuntary future representations in healthy populations and validates a laboratory paradigm that can be flexibly and systematically utilized to explore different characteristics of voluntary and involuntary MTT, which has not been possible within naturalistic paradigms.

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“…In the General Discussion, we describe the widespread importance of remindings and discuss results suggestive of large individual differences in the likelihood of looking back, along with the potential importance of those individual differences. Berntsen, Staugaard, and Sørensen (2013) provided an excellent review of research revealing spontaneous episodic remembering, and they reported results to contrast voluntary with spontaneous remembering. Spontaneous remembering was described as being faster and more dependent on stimulus control than is voluntary memory.…”

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confidence: 99%

On the importance of looking back: The role of recursive remindings in recency judgments and cued recall

Jacoby

Wahlheim

2013

Mem Cogn

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Suppose that you were asked which of two movies you had most recently seen. The results of the experiments reported here suggest that your answer would be more accurate if, when viewing the later movie, you were reminded of the earlier one. In the present experiments, we investigated the role of remindings in recency judgments and cued-recall performance. We did this by presenting a list composed of two instances from each of several different categories and later asking participants to select (Exp. 1) or to recall (Exp. 2) the more recently presented instance. Reminding was manipulated by varying instructions to look back over memory of earlier instances during the presentation of later instances. As compared to a control condition, cued-recall performance revealed facilitation effects when remindings occurred and were later recollected, but interference effects in their absence. The effects of reminding on recency judgments paralleled those on cued recall of more recently presented instances. We interpret these results as showing that reminding produces a recursive representation that embeds memory for an earlier-presented category instance into that of a later-presented one and, thereby, preserves their temporal order. Large individual differences in the probabilities of remindings and of their later recollection were observed. The widespread importance of recursive reminding for theory and for applied purposes is discussed.Keywords Recursive remindings . Recency judgments . Cued recall Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. -Søren Kierkegaard (1869/1996 Although life must be lived forward, memory can serve as a source of assistance when dealing with the present and planning for the future. As an example, being reminded of a prior event by the occurrence of a later event can influence the encoding and subsequent memory of both the earlier and the later events (e.g., Wahlheim & Jacoby, 2013). However, such reminding is not likely to always be spontaneous, but instead may sometimes rely on purposeful looking back to the past. In the present article, we examine the importance of looking back for judgments of recency and for performance when participants are asked to recall the most recently presented instance of a category. For both types of task, we show that looking back, along with resultant remindings, are important for performance and can be brought under task control.We begin by describing the importance of reminding for a variety of memory tasks, and then consider advantages of bringing remindings under task control as a means of investigating their effects. To anticipate, we show that as compared to a control condition, proactive facilitation is found in cued recall of the most recently presented instance of a category in the presence of recollection of a prior reminding, whereas proactive interference is found in its absence. In the General Discussion, we describe the widespread importance of remindings and discuss results suggestive of large individual difference...

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Why am I remembering this now? Predicting the occurrence of involuntary (spontaneous) episodic memories.

Cited by 129 publications

References 66 publications

Brightening the Day With Flashes of Positive Mental Imagery: A Case Study of an Individual With Depression

Brightening the Day With Flashes of Positive Mental Imagery: A Case Study of an Individual With Depression

Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

On the importance of looking back: The role of recursive remindings in recency judgments and cued recall

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