So that's why I don't remember: Normalising forgetting of childhood events influences false autobiographical beliefs but not memories

We investigated changes in autobiographical belief and memory ratings for childhood events, after informing individuals that forgetting childhood events is common. Participants received false prevalence information (indicating that a particular childhood event occurred frequently in the population) plus a rationale normalising the forgetting of childhood events; false prevalence information alone; or no manipulation, for one (Study 1) or two (Study 2) unlikely childhood events. Results demonstrated that combining prevalence information and the “forgetting rationale” substantially influenced autobiographical belief ratings, whereas prevalence information alone had no impact (Study 1) or a significantly lesser impact (Study 2) on belief ratings. Prevalence information consistently impacted plausibility ratings. No changes in memory ratings were observed. These results provide further support for a nested relationship between judgements of plausibility, belief, and memory in evaluating the occurrence of autobiographical events. Furthermore, the results suggest that some purported false memory phenomena may instead reflect the development of autobiographical false beliefs in the absence of memory.     

Mental imagery as an emotional amplifier: application to bipolar disorder

Cognitions in the form of mental images have a more powerful impact on emotion than their verbal counterparts. This review synthesizes the cognitive science of imagery and emotion with transdiagnostic clinical research, yielding novel predictions for the basis of emotional volatility in bipolar disorder. Anxiety is extremely common in patients with bipolar disorder and is associated with increased dysfunction and suicidality, yet it is poorly understood and rarely treated. Mental imagery is a neglected aspect of bipolar anxiety although in anxiety disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder and social phobia focusing on imagery has been crucial for the development of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).In this review we present a cognitive model of imagery and emotion applied to bipolar disorder. Within this model mental imagery amplifies emotion, drawing on Clark's cyclical panic model [(1986). A cognitive approach to panic. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 24, 461–470]. We (1) emphasise imagery's amplification of anxiety (cycle one); (2) suggest that imagery amplifies the defining (hypo-) mania of bipolar disorder (cycle two), whereby the overly positive misinterpretation of triggers leads to mood elevation (escalated by imagery), increasing associated beliefs, goals, and action likelihood (all strengthened by imagery).Imagery suggests a unifying explanation for key unexplained features of bipolar disorder: ubiquitous anxiety, mood instability and creativity. Introducing imagery has novel implications for bipolar treatment innovation - an area where CBT improvements are much-needed.     

Inner speech slips exhibit lexical bias, but not the phonemic similarity effect

Inner speech, that little voice that people often hear inside their heads while thinking, is a form of mental imagery. The properties of inner speech errors can be used to investigate the nature of inner speech, just as overt slips are informative about overt speech production. Overt slips tend to create words (lexical bias) and involve similar exchanging phonemes (phonemic similarity effect). We examined these effects in inner and overt speech via a tongue-twister recitation task. While lexical bias was present in both inner and overt speech errors, the phonemic similarity effect was evident only for overt errors, producing a significant overtness by similarity interaction. We propose that inner speech is impoverished at lower (featural) levels, but robust at higher (phonemic) levels.     

Self-images play a causal role in social phobia

Patients with social phobia often experience negative self-images in social situations. The current study investigated whether negative self-images have a causal role in maintaining social phobia. Patients with social phobia participated twice in a conversation with a stranger, once whilst holding their usual negative self-image in mind and once whilst holding a less negative (control) self-image in mind, with order counterbalanced across participants. Compared to the control image condition, when participants held the negative image in mind they experienced greater anxiety, rated their anxiety symptoms as being more visible, and rated their performance as poorer. An assessor who did not know which image was being held also rated participants' anxiety as more evident and their behaviour as less positive when the negative image was being held in mind. Finally, when participant and assessor ratings were compared, participants underestimated their performance and overestimated the visibility of their anxiety to a significantly greater extent in the negative imagery condition. Taken together, these results support the hypothesis that negative self-imagery has a causal role in maintaining social phobia.     

Imagery-inducing distraction leads to cognitive tunnelling and deteriorated driving performance

The effects of imagery-induced distraction on hazard perception and eye movements were investigated in 2 simulated driving experiments. Experiment 1: sixty participants viewed and responded to 2 driving films containing hazards. Group 1 completed the task without distraction; group 2 completed a concurrent imagery inducing telephone task; group 3 completed a non imagery inducing telephone task. Experiment 2: eye-tracking data were collected from forty-six participants while they reacted to hazards presented in 16 films of driving scenes. 8 films contained hazards presented in either central or peripheral vision and 8 contained no hazards. Half of the participants performed a concurrent imagery-inducing task. Compared to undistracted participants, dual-taskers were slower to respond to hazards; detected fewer hazards; committed more “looked but failed to see” errors; and demonstrated “visual tunnelling”. Telephone conversations may interfere with driving performance because the two tasks compete for similar processing resources, due to the imagery-evoking aspects of phone use.     

The drawing effect: Evidence for reliable and robust memory benefits in free recall

In 7 free-recall experiments, the benefit of creating drawings of to-be-remembered information relative to writing was examined as a mnemonic strategy. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were presented with a list of words and were asked to either draw or write out each. Drawn words were better recalled than written. Experiments 3–5 showed that the memory boost provided by drawing could not be explained by elaborative encoding (deep level of processing, LoP), visual imagery, or picture superiority, respectively. In Experiment 6, we explored potential limitations of the drawing effect, by reducing encoding time and increasing list length. Drawing, relative to writing, still benefited memory despite these constraints. In Experiment 7, the drawing effect was significant even when encoding trial types were compared in pure lists between participants, inconsistent with a distinctiveness account. Together these experiments indicate that drawing enhances memory relative to writing, across settings, instructions, and alternate encoding strategies, both within- and between-participants, and that a deep LoP, visual imagery, or picture superiority, alone or collectively, are not sufficient to explain the observed effect. We propose that drawing improves memory by encouraging a seamless integration of semantic, visual, and motor aspects of a memory trace.     

The generation and maintenance of visual mental images: evidence from image type and aging

Imagery is a multi-componential process involving different mental operations. This paper addresses whether separate processes underlie the generation, maintenance and transformation of mental images or whether these cognitive processes rely on the same mental functions. We also examine the influence of age on these mental operations for independence of components. In Experiment 1, younger (22 years) and older (69 years) adults generated and maintained general, specific, contextual and autobiographical visual mental images evoked in response to concrete nouns. The older adults had longer generation times, but there was no difference between the two groups on maintenance. Both groups had shortest generation and maintenance times for general images, whereas only the older adults took longest in generating autobiographical images. In Experiment 2, the total maintenance time and number of transformations for each type of image were compared in another group of younger and older adults. General images were less transformed and more subject to decay for both groups. The older people maintained the autobiographical mental images for longest compared to other image types. In conclusion, image generation, maintenance and transformation seem to be differently affected by type of image and aging, supporting a model of their cognitive segregation.     

Internalism, active externalism, and nonconceptual content: the ins and outs of cognition

Active externalism (also known as the extended mind hypothesis) says that we use objects and situations in the world as external memory stores that we consult as needs dictate. This gives us economies of storage: We do not need to remember that Bill has blue eyes and wavy hair if we can acquire this information by looking at Bill. I argue for a corollary to this position, which I call 'internalism.' Internalism says we can acquire knowledge on a need-to-know basis by consulting portable, inner analogues of the world. This, however, leads to a dilemma. If the knowledge was stored in memory, it is difficult to see how we could have acquired it by consulting inner analogues, for it would seem that we knew it already. Moreover, if it was stored in memory, we lose the economies of storage that provide much of the rationale for external memory stores and hence for their inner analogues. If, on the other hand, the knowledge was not stored in memory, it is difficult to see how we could have acquired it by consulting inner analogues, for it was not there to be acquired. I propose a solution to this problem that turns on the concept of nonconceptual content, and I relate the solution to Stephen Kosslyn's (1994) architecture of perception and visual mental imagery. Viewed in a broader context, the solution shows that the world leaks into the mind, as well as mind leaking into the world.