Memory characteristics of recently imagined events and real events experienced previously

In two experiments, we evaluated the memory characteristics of real and imagined events as they changed over time. Memories of real events were richer than memories of imagined events, and memories of recent events were richer than of events from a week earlier. These differences interacted such that memories of real events performed in week 1 were very similar to memories of events that were imagined in week 2. Source monitoring was tested and implications for the repressed or recovered memory debate are considered.     

The association between reality-based beliefs and indirectly experienced traumatization

The purpose of the study was to examine the association between belief types and the magnitude of indirect traumatization. Specific types of beliefs were defined in terms of the cognitive orientation theory, which is a cognitive-motivational approach to the understanding, predicting, and changing of behaviors. Belief types that were analyzed included beliefs about self, general beliefs, beliefs about norms, and goal beliefs as they relate to personal growth. Study participants included 38 rescuers (body handlers), 37 nurses, and 31 rehabilitation workers who treated injured civilians that had been exposed to politically motivated violence. The Cognitive Orientation for Posttraumatic Growth Scale was used to assess beliefs about personal growth. The Revised Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Inventory was administered to evaluate indirect traumatization. The results indicate that three of the four belief types related to personal growth were associated with the level of indirect traumatization. Optimistic and positive beliefs about self and general beliefs were associated with a lower level of indirect traumatization symptomatology, suggesting that these types of beliefs may counteract indirect traumatization. On the other hand, stronger goal beliefs were associated with greater indirect traumatization. The negative association between positive goal beliefs and indirect trauma may be related to the gap the individual perceives between the hoped-for ideals and the trauma-stricken reality. These results indicate the importance of cognitive beliefs and their possible role in determining the response to indirect traumatization.     

Remembering experienced and reported events

Reported events are distinguished from personally experienced (autobiographical) events by being known from reports provided from some person or agency—for example, news reports. Memory for reported events has usually been ignored theoretically, or classified as ‘semantic’, though it is clearly concerned with specific, dated episodes. We discuss a number of differences between the information available to specify experienced and reported events, and the possible implications of such differences for remembering the events. A study of retrieval of the two types of events, prompted by cue words, showed that reported events take much longer time to retrieve but are dated as being equally old as experienced events. Effects of using emotion words as cues were similar for the two event types. These results suggest that reported events are forgotten (or become inaccessible) at the same rate as experienced events, but that memories are organized in such a way that reported events often have to be accessed indirectly through memories of associated autobiographical events.     

Memory for traumatic events

This research compares memory for traumatic events with memory for non-traumatic versions of the same event. In Experiment 1, subjects watched an event depicted in slides while focusing and rehearsing the central detail of each slide. They were tested after a short or a longer retention interval (20 min or 2 weeks). Subjects who watched the traumatic version were better able to recall the central details that they had rehearsed, but were less well able to recognize the specific slides that they saw. Better recall for the traumatic group did not occur because the words used to describe the recalled details were inherently more memorable, as shown in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, subjects watched either a traumatic or non-traumatic version of a filmed event and about 6 months later they were asked to remember the essence of the film. Subjects who saw the traumatic version were better able to recall the essence of the film. A similar finding was obtained with a group of subjects from Experiment 1 who were also contacted about 6 months after their initial participation. These results suggest that some information (the essence, the theme) of a traumatic event might be relatively well retained in memory, while memory is impaired for many of the specific, and especially peripheral, details.     

Perceiving sex directly and indirectly: meaning in motion and morphology

We employed a novel technique to explore how the body's motion and morphology affect judgments of sex and gender. Stimuli depicted animated human walkers that varied in motion (gait patterns varying shoulder swagger and hip sway) and in morphology (waist-to-hip ratio). The potency of morphology in categorical sex judgments was confirmed. Visual scanning of the walkers was concentrated in the waist and hip region of the body (Study 1a). This targeted scanning was attenuated, however, when the sex of the target had been prespecified (Study 1b). Body motion permitted categorical judgments of sex, but these judgments were mediated by perceived gender (Study 2). These studies provide converging evidence for the primacy of the body's shape in categorical judgments of sex.     

Memory for thematically arousing events

Many studies have indicated that emotional arousal improves memory for the center, or gist, of an event but undermines memory for the event's periphery. However, all of these studies have elicited emotion by showing participants some salient visual stimulus intended to arouse them (e.g., the sight of a wound). This stimulus may have served as an attention magnet, and this, not the arousal, may have been the cause of the observed narrowing of memory. In this article, we examine how participants remember events that involve thematically induced arousal, arousal produced by empathy, rather than by a visual emotional stimulus. The data show that emotionality improves memory for all aspects of these events, with no memory narrowing.     

Critical incidents: Life events for experienced family therapists

Summary The results of this investigation suggest that therapists' professional style and clinical use of self patterns are impacted by critical life events occurring in their personal life. Many subjects reflected on how changes in their family constellations (both family of origin and family of procreation) were important to their professional development. They frequently mentioned that marriage, children, divorce, and illness or death of a loved one impacted their personal and, then, their professional lives. The important life events of becoming a parent or losing a significant loved one was specifically mentioned as strongly influencing changes in one's professional direction and therapeutic style.Becoming a parent caused the interviewees to reevaluate their expectations of their own parents, their client families and themselves. Changes in career aspirations, interactional patterns, and the capacity to be consistent and calm were explored and understood differently. Many subjects described how this transition in their own life shifted their primary focus and altered many of their existing relationships. In particular, female therapists with younger children related how their sense of being female changed. They sought out other women for intimate contact more frequently, they understood their own mothers better, and they frequently were less judgmental of mothers in their client families.Along with creating their own families, death of a parent was keynoted as having a strong impact on the subjects' personal and professional lives. They described questioning (and frequently changing) the amount of time they spent working and the type of work they did. Many began to push for more emotionally intense relationships personally and therapeutically. Detailing how their therapeutic goals for a family now included connection-making rather than just problem solving, they described being much more willing to share their vulnerabilities and personal needs with clients.     

Memory for events after twenty years

This is a study of one person's memory for events that occurred twenty years earlier. Memory was observed to follow an asymptotic rate of decay. No experience of recovered memories occurred. Factors found to be related to recall were the rarity of the event, its vividness, and the emotional intensity experienced at the time. Factors unrelated or only weakly related were perceived importance of the event, its association with knowledge, and intensities of physical sensations. Pleasant events were recalled a little better than unpleasant. Though less strongly associated with memory than is location, moderate marking of events with date and time was found. The results suggest that personal memory declines as the images of events one by one submerge into the mass of generalized experiences. The more vivid, rare, and emotional experiences are more likely to remain discriminable, and may be sustained by rehearsal. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory for time: How people date events

The effect of different formats on the accuracy of dating news and the distribution of personal events was examined in four conditions. In the first, participants had to date events in the absolute time format (e.g., "July 2004"), and in the second, they had to date events in the relative time format (e.g., "3 weeks ago"). In the other conditions, they were asked to choose between the two formats. We found a small backward telescoping effect for recent news events and a large forward telescoping effect for remote events. Events dated in the absolute time format were more accurate than those dated in the relative time format. Furthermore, participants preferred to date news events with the relative time format and personal events with the absolute time format, as well as preferring to date remote events in the relative time format and recent events in the absolute time format.     

Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin

We investigated whether a bottlenosed dolphin’s ability to recall and repeat actions on command would immediately generalize to actions performed with specified objects. The dolphin was tested on her ability to repeat 18 novel behaviors performed with potentially interchangeable objects specified using an artificial gestural language. Such “action events” were correctly repeated at above chance levels, indicating that the dolphin had access to memories of those events. Performance levels were, however, lower than in previous tests. The dolphin appeared to have difficulty recalling which object an action was performed with. Previous research has demonstrated that animals can recall features of their environment and features of their actions independently of one another. The results of this study demonstrate (1) that the dolphin’s concept of repeating extends beyond simply accessing memories of movement patterns, and (2) that dolphins’ memories of past events incorporate representations of both self-performed acts and objects, locations, or gestural instructions. Received:10 October 1998 / Accepted after revision: 22 December 1998     

Children's memories of experienced and nonexperienced events following repeated interviews

The present study compared 3- and 5-year-olds' reports of a true or false play interaction following repeated interviews. Final interviews were conducted either by the same researcher or by a new researcher. Age-related improvements in performance were evident. Also, 3-year-olds questioned repeatedly about an entirely false event made more errors in response to specific questions than 3-year-olds questioned repeatedly about false details of a true event. Five-year-olds who were questioned about the false event, however, were particularly accurate when answering questions about never-experienced body touch. Interviewer familiarity was associated with decreases in the amount of narrative detail 5-year-olds provided in free-recall and with increases in 3-year-olds' accuracy in response to direct questions. Both errors and response latency on a cognitive matching task were related to children's suggestibility.     

Memory for unattended events: Remembering with and without awareness

The effects of memory for unattended events—for example, events that occur while a person is asleep, anesthetized, or selectively attending to other ongoing events, as in a speech-shadowing task—are rarely revealed in tests of retention that require remembering to be deliberate or intentional. Might such effects become evident in tests that do not demand awareness of remembering? Results of the present shadowing study, involving the recognition and spelling of previously unattended homophones, suggest an affirmative answer to this question.     

Evaluative conditioning without directly experienced pairings of the conditioned and the unconditioned stimuli

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the valence change of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) that is due to the previous pairing with another stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US). We investigated whether EC can occur also when the CS-US pairings are not experienced directly by the participant but are implied by other events that the participant encounters. In two experiments, positive USs were presented in some trials and negative USs in other trials. Afterwards, participants were given information from which it was possible to conclude that CSs were covertly present during these trials. Finally, the valence of these CSs was registered using both implicit (Implicit Association Test, affective priming) and explicit measures (valence ratings). In line with the assumption that EC effects can be based on CS-US pairings that are not directly experienced, the valence of the CSs changed in the direction of the US with which they were covertly paired. This effect was observed both on explicit and on implicit measures. We argue that several aspects of our results are in line with propositional models of EC and fit less well with association formation models.     

Evaluative conditioning without directly experienced pairings of the conditioned and the unconditioned stimuli

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the valence change of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) that is due to the previous pairing with another stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US). We investigated whether EC can occur also when the CS–US pairings are not experienced directly by the participant but are implied by other events that the participant encounters. In two experiments, positive USs were presented in some trials and negative USs in other trials. Afterwards, participants were given information from which it was possible to conclude that CSs were covertly present during these trials. Finally, the valence of these CSs was registered using both implicit (Implicit Association Test, affective priming) and explicit measures (valence ratings). In line with the assumption that EC effects can be based on CS–US pairings that are not directly experienced, the valence of the CSs changed in the direction of the US with which they were covertly paired. This effect was observed both on explicit and on implicit measures. We argue that several aspects of our results are in line with propositional models of EC and fit less well with association formation models.     

Comparing the influence of directly vs. indirectly encountered post-event misinformation on eyewitness remembering

Some research has found a stronger influence of directly (face-to-face; co-witness; ‘social’) vs. indirectly (through written reports, ‘non-social’) encountered post-event misinformation on eyewitness memory reports, whereas other research finds no (big) difference. We argue and demonstrate that a crucial but so far neglected variable underlying this difference is memory for the misleading information itself. In a study with N = 120 participants who encountered misinformation directly or indirectly, we found misinformation retention (as assessed in a separate test) to be positively associated with a broad range of misinformation effects. Influence type (direct vs. indirect), however, did not moderate the misinformation effect in terms of memory for original details, and misinformation endorsement was even weaker in the direct influence condition. In our view, these findings reflect differential conversion of retained misinformation into test performance. Other than this, influence type had essentially no effects on remembering; nor did an additional post-warning manipulation.     

Comprehension of directly and indirectly stated main ideas and details in discourse by brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged listeners

Aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged, and non-brain-damaged subjects heard short narrative paragraphs. Each paragraph contained four main ideas and one or more details related to each main idea. After each paragraph was presented, subjects' comprehension and retention of main ideas and details from the paragraph were tested. Some of the test items directly restated information from paragraphs and others paraphrased information from paragraphs. All groups of subjects remembered main ideas better than they remembered details, and no group of subjects was significantly affected by whether test items directly or indirectly stated information from paragraphs. Disfluent aphasic and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraphs comprehension scores were not significantly poorer than those of non-brain-damaged subjects. Fluent and mixed aphasic subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were significantly worse than those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores. right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were not significantly those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores.     

The impact of experienced versus non‐experienced suggestions on children's recall of repeated events

Three experiments were conducted to test the proposition that children's suggestibility about an occurrence of a repeated event is heightened when an interviewer suggests false details that were experienced in non‐target occurrences of the event as opposed to new details that never occurred. In each experiment, children participated in a repeated event during which specific items varied each time (e.g. the children always got a sticker but the theme of the sticker was different in each occurrence). Separate biasing and memory interviews were then conducted. In Experiment 1, the interviewer merely suggested that the false details might have occurred in the event. In the remaining experiments, the suggested details were clearly linked to the target occurrence with either a contextual or temporal cue. The potential moderating effect of the child's age (Experiment 1) and the retention interval (Experiments 1 and 2) were also examined. Consistent with the initial hypothesis, suggestions about experienced (non‐target) details were more likely to be repeated by the children compared to suggestions about non‐experienced details. In Experiments 2 and 3, experienced suggestions were also more likely to inhibit children's recall of the target occurrence. The relevance and generalizability of these findings to the legal setting are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory for action events: findings in neurological patients

Encoding action phrases by enacting leads normally to better memory performance than verbal encoding. In order to gain additional insight into the representational basis of the enactment effect, neurological patients are contrasted with healthy participants. Persons suffering from Parkinson's disease, which primarily impairs the motor system, and patients suffering from Frontal Lobe Syndrome, which primarily affects action-related planning processes, were involved. We investigated whether the enactment effect would be differentially affected by these disorders. In addition, the characteristics of information processing after encoding by enacting was analyzed by varying memory material (unrelated versus clusterable actions) and by adding an encoding condition that included obligatory action planning (director condition). The findings indicate that the impact of motor information for the enactment effect is not dominant compared to the role of action-related cognitive and motivational processes, in particular planning processes. The findings of the two experiments are explained within traditional conceptual memory theories.