Out of one's mind: a study of involuntary semantic memories

The study of memories that pop into one's mind without any conscious attempt to retrieve them began only recently. While there are some studies on involuntary autobiographical memories (e.g., ) research on involuntary semantic memories or mind-popping is virtually non-existent. The latter is defined as an involuntary conscious occurrence of brief items of one's network of semantic knowledge. The recall of these items (e.g., a word, a name, a tune) is not accompanied by additional contextual information and/or involvement of self-a standard feature of involuntary autobiographical memories. The paper reports several diary and questionnaire studies which looked into the nature and frequency of occurrence of these memories. The data show that people do experience involuntary semantic memories which tend to occur without any apparent cues while being engaged in relatively automatic activities. Possible mechanisms of involuntary semantic memories are discussed (e.g., very long-term priming), and the results of the study provide information on the possible duration of the priming effects in everyday life. Related theoretical and methodological issues and future avenues of research in this neglected area are outlined.     

Towards a cognitive-behavioral model of PTSD in children and adolescents

Posttraumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents has been studied only for the past 15–20 years and is the subject of a burgeoning corpus of research. Much research has focused on examining whether children and adolescents have the same responses to trauma as those experienced by adults. Many of the research tools used to investigate children's responses are taken from measures designed for use with adults, and these measures have proven to be useful. However, it has not been established that children's responses to traumatic events are related to the same underlying processes as are adults' responses. The possible application of 2 recent cognitive models of PTSD in adults to understanding PTSD in children and adolescents is discussed in this paper, within the context of what is already known about children's reaction to trauma and existing theoretical accounts of childhood PTSD. Particular attention is paid toward the nature of children's memories of traumatic events and how these memories relate to the reexperiencing symptoms of PTSD, and cognitive processes that may play a role in the maintenance of PTSD. It is proposed that the adoption of a more specific cognitive–behavioral framework in the study of this disorder may be beneficial and lead to better treatment outcomes.     

Fewer intrusions after an attentional bias modification training for perceptual reminders of analogue trauma

The present experimental analogue study used computerised attention training to investigate the role of attention bias in the prediction of intrusive memories. After exposure to a trauma film, participants in a training group (n=22) were presented with a variant of the exogenic cueing task (ECT) in which visual film reminders (i.e., stills from the trauma film) were always presented during invalid and neutral control stimuli always during valid trials. The purpose of this cue–location contingency was reinforcing the direction of attention away from film reminders. Control participants (n=23) performed a similar training without such a contingency. Post-training processing bias was assessed with a single target Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task, in which trauma-film reminders served as task-irrelevant distracters appearing shortly before a neutral target. The frequency of film-related intrusions was recorded in a take-home diary and at a follow-up session three days after film viewing. Participants who underwent attention training reported fewer film-related intrusions and showed less interference by visual film distracters than controls. Implications for research on attention bias after real-life trauma are discussed.     

Perception of Size of Movement Patterns

Physiological data suggest that perception and memory of kinesthesis may differ depending on whether a movement pattern is actively commanded or passively induced. An attempt was made to demonstrate a difference between these two types of movements by employing a cross-modal visual recognition test of size perception. Absolute and algebraic errors in the matching of kinesthesis with vision were measured. Positive algebraic errors were seen indicating that subjects’ perception for the size of kinesthetic movement patterns was magnified as compared to vision. Active kinesthesis was matched with vision more accurately than was passive kinesthesis, and the data yielded information about the differential contribution of active and passive muscle compartments to the global kinesthetic perception of voluntary movement. Cross-modal matching of kinesthesis with vision was in certain cases as accurate as visual intramodal matching. It was argued that active kinesthesis has internal references, and vision has external references to facilitate the similar-size recognition performance.     

Parental Influences on Memories of Parents and Friends

The authors evaluated the role parent–child relationship quality has on two types of memories, those of parents and those of friends. Participants were 198 Italian university students who recalled memories during 4 separate timed memory-fluency tasks about their preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school and university years. Half were instructed to recall memories involving parents and the remainder memories involving friends. Moreover, parent–child relationships were assessed by the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; W. Furman & D. Buhrmester, 1985) and Adolescents’ Report of Parental Monitoring (D. M. Capaldi & G. R. Patterson, 1989). Results showed that men with positive parent–son relationships had more memories of parents and more affectively positive memories of friends, supporting a consistency model positing similarity between parent–child relationships and memories of friends. Women with positive parental relationship quality had more affectively positive memories of parents but for friends, positive relationship quality only predicted positive memories when young. At older ages, especially middle school-aged children, negative parent–daughter relationships predicted more positive memories of friends, supporting a compensatory model. The gender of parent also mattered, with fathers having a more influential role on affect for memories of friends.     

Relationships Among Education,Age, and Cognitive Functioning in Older African Americans: The Impact of Desegregation

The current study sought to examine whether there were differences in the structure of specific cognitive abilities and their association with age and education in a sample of African American elders with two different early educational experiences. The study was conducted with a sample of 197 community dwelling older adults ranging in age from 50 to 79 years (mean age = 61.50 years, SD = 7.30 years). The sample included 79 individuals who attended a desegregated school at anytime during their formal education, while 118 participants completed their schooling without ever attending a desegregated school. Major results included: (1) typical patterns among cognitive abilities and age as well as years of education were found in the full sample of participants; (2) the pattern of age differences in cognition differed between the two groups. Regarding the latter, the desegregated sample exhibited significant negative age differences for some cognitive abilities, while the segregated group did not. Discussion focuses on the importance of considering the nature of the educational experience when examining cognitive aging in African American elders.     

Exploring self-defining memories in schizophrenia

Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired in recalling specific events from their personal past. However, the relationship between autobiographical memory impairments and disturbance of the sense of identity in schizophrenia has not been investigated in detail. In this study the authors investigated schizophrenic patients’ ability to recall self-defining memories; that is, memories that play an important role in building and maintaining the self-concept. Results showed that patients recalled as many specific self-defining memories as healthy participants. However, patients with schizophrenia exhibited an abnormal reminiscence bump and reported different types of thematic content (i.e., they recalled less memories about past achievements and more memories regarding hospitalisation and stigmatisation of illness). Furthermore, the findings suggest that impairments in extracting meaning from personal memories could represent a core disturbance of autobiographical memory in patients with schizophrenia.     

Experimental manipulation of prior experience: Effects on item and associative recognition

Frequency of exposure to very low- and high-frequency words was manipulated in a three-phase (familiarisation, study, and test) design. During familiarisation, words were presented with their definition (once, four times, or not presented). One week (Experiment 1) or one day (Experiment 2) later, participants studied a list of homogeneous pairs (i.e., pair members were matched on background and familiarisation frequency). Item and associative recognition of high- and very low-frequency words presented in intact, rearranged, old-new, or new-new pairs were tested in Experiment 1. Associative recognition of very low-frequency words was tested in Experiment 2. Results showed that prior familiaris ation improved associative recognition of very low-frequency pairs, but had no effect on high-frequency pairs. The role of meaning in the formation of item-to-item and item-to-context associations and the implications for current models of memory are discussed.     

Remembering pride and shame: Self-enhancement and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory

People's self-images are grounded in autobiographical memories and, in particular, in the phenomenological experience associated with remembering. The desire to increase or maintain the positivity of the self-image (i.e., the self-enhancement motive) might thus play an important role in shaping memory phenomenology. This study examined this hypothesis by asking participants to recall positive and negative events that involve self-evaluations (i.e., pride and shame) and positive and negative events that involve evaluations about others (i.e., admiration and contempt); various phenomenological characteristics (e.g., sensory details, feeling of re-experiencing) were assessed using rating scales. The results show a positivity bias (i.e., subjectively remembering positive events with more details than negative events) for events that involve self-evaluations but not for events that involve evaluations of others. In addition, this bias was stronger for people high in self-esteem. It is concluded that biases affecting the phenomenology of autobiographical memory are part of the arsenal of psychological mechanisms people use to maintain a positive self-image.     

The emotional and reconstructive determinants of emotional memories: An experimental approach to flashbulb memory investigation

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are vivid and detailed memories of the reception context of a public emotional event. Brown and Kulik (1977) introduced the label FBM to suggest the idea that individuals are able to preserve knowledge of an event in an indiscriminate way, in analogy with a photograph that preserves all details of a scene. Research work on FBMs has primarily been conducted using a naturalistic approach in order to explore the role of the emotional and reconstructive factors on FBM formation and maintenance. Nevertheless, these studies lack a sufficient control on the factors that might intervene in the process of FBM formation. The contribution of the present studies is addressed to experimentally investigating the role of emotional and reconstructive factors on emotionally charged memories, specifically on FBMs. Paralleling FBM findings, the two studies revealed that simply being in an emotional state allows people to remember all available information, such as irrelevant and unrelated details. Furthermore, the resulting memories are affected by reconstructive processes so that they are not as accurate as their richness of details would suggest.