Autobiographical memories encompass both personally experienced events and shared public events, each thought to serve distinct functions in daily life. A memory for a given event is known to change over time, with specific details fading while the overall gist is relatively preserved. Whether this pattern differs for personal versus public events remains unclear, particularly for positive public experiences. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a longitudinal behavioural study in which 175 university students were asked to report on memories for a personal event and a positive public event, the 2024 solar eclipse, four times over six months. At each timepoint, the participants provided free recalls of the memories, answered specific questions about details of the memories, and completed subjective ratings. Using natural language processing to assess gist memory in free recalls, we found stronger preservation of gist for the solar eclipse than for personal memories. Assessing the consistency of specific event details within the memories across time, we found a steeper decline in consistency for the solar eclipse than for personal memories. Finally, the subjective rating responses revealed that the solar eclipse memories retained a stronger confidence in recall compared to personal event memories. These results point towards different trajectories for personal versus public event memories, which could reflect different roles of these memories in daily life.
This study examined how therapist-client interactions during trauma therapy are associated with the interactional reconstruction of trauma narratives in immigrant clients, focusing on narrative coherence, temporal sequencing and cross-session stabilisation rather than objective memory accuracy. Sixty-two therapy sessions and 24 client interviews with participants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon conducted in Isfahan, Iran were analyzed. In the qualitative phase, micro-level discourse analysis explored therapist prompts, reformulations and client responses, while macro-level narrative analysis examined cross-session coherence and organisation of trauma narratives. Identified patterns were further coded to document their frequency and co-occurrence with narrative shifts. Results indicated that interpretive questions and reformulative practices appeared associated with changes in temporal sequencing, evaluative framing and narrative coherence, whereas open-ended prompts and reflective listening supported autonomous narrative elaboration. Multilingual resources and culturally patterned storytelling also modulated narrative co-construction and stabilisation. Findings highlight the ethical and clinical importance of attending to language, interaction and culture to support therapeutic processes while minimising unintended influences on clients' narrative construction during therapy. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions of how therapist-client interaction shapes narrative reconstruction in trauma-focused psychotherapy.
Research findings suggest that people remember reputational information that is incongruent to their expectations particularly well. However, in most of these experiments, the same facial images were used during both the learning and testing phases. This raises the question of whether participants truly recognised the individuals (identity recognition) or merely remembered specific pictorial details. The present experiment investigated whether changing the viewing perspective during the testing phase would yield similar results compared to a control condition using the classical design (i.e., identical facial images during learning and testing). The results revealed a source memory advantage for cheaters in both the changed perspective and the control condition. These findings suggest that participants did not rely solely on pictorial details but were able to recognise the individuals and recall their cheating behaviour.
Autobiographical memory is impaired in Alzheimer's disease (AD), particularly episodic richness and phenomenological detail. Grounded in embodied cognition, this study examined whether collaborative object handling, combining sensorimotor and social interaction, could support autobiographical recall in AD. We recruited 22 patients with mild-to-moderate AD and 20 matched older controls to complete two autobiographical memory conditions in a within-subject design: a condition involving autobiographical recall without objects and a condition involving autobiographical recall supported by collaboratively handling objects. Participants recalled four autobiographical memories, with two memories in the autobiographical recall without objects condition and two in the collaborative object handling condition. Memories were scored for autobiographical richness, event specificity, spatiotemporal anchoring, phenomenological details, long-term recall after 15 min, latency to memory recall, and number of prompts before memory recall. Across both participant groups (AD patients and controls), collaborative object handling increased phenomenological richness, reduced event specificity, and facilitated memory access, as shown by shorter retrieval latencies and fewer prompts. AD patients showed lower overall autobiographical richness, spatiotemporal anchoring, phenomenological richness, and long-term recall than controls. These findings suggest that collaborative object handling may facilitate autobiographical recall in AD by enhancing phenomenological richness and memory accessibility, supporting embodied and socially supported reminiscence approaches.
Metaphors are widely used by researchers to communicate ideas in cognitive psychology. This is the first study to systematically explore the naïve psychology of human memory metaphors. We attained this goal by surveying a large sample of the adult population resident in Northern and Central Italy (N = 846). Participants were administered four self-report questionnaires assessing their favourite memory metaphor, memory beliefs, autobiographical memory experience, and metamemory. Overall, the memory metaphors most endorsed by our sample were store, camera, computer, and map. Personal motives underlying these choices significantly varied across the metaphors. Multinomial logistic regressions showed that the choice of store, camera, and map was significantly influenced by a series of sociodemographic and psychological variables (e.g., age, education, satisfaction with one's memory), which varied depending on the chosen metaphor. We argue that some metaphors, better than others, are able to reflect the characteristics and functions that ordinary people attribute, implicitly or explicitly, to human memory. Study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.
Many victims of sexual violence develop trauma-related disorders, often requiring early trauma-focused psychotherapeutic treatment. Guideline-compliant treatments can effectively alleviate PTSD symptoms; the positive effects of recommended trauma-focused techniques are undisputed. Nevertheless, it is important to critically discuss potential risks. Several recent publications on effects of trauma therapy report no cause for concern, emphasising that trauma-specific treatment has no negative effects on the memories of patients who have experienced trauma. This line of reasoning overlooks the fact that patients may already develop trauma-related beliefs or memories through counselling, prior treatments, or content on social media before starting their current trauma-specific treatment. In such cases, even trauma therapy conducted according to standard practice can cause harm. In this article, we focus on such case scenarios, which are encountered in forensic practice. We use case examples to discuss the significance of widespread misconceptions regarding the accessibility of traumatic memories and their role in the iatrogenic development or consolidation of false memories. As will be shown, it is necessary to raise awareness on these risks and on misconceptions which have been disproved. We recommend psychoeducation on the susceptibility of autobiographical memory to errors and a systematic anamnesis prior to the start of trauma-focused interventions.
Chunking is a key mechanism by which working memory (WM) compresses sequential information, yet little is known about how it reorganises positional representations. We examined when chunking produces stable and shared local-global positional structure in WM. Across four behavioural experiments, participants encoded nine-item sequences and later reported the original position of a probed item. The sequence types differed in the source and strength of chunk-defining boundaries: structured linguistic sequences, scrambled linguistic sequences, color-segmented shape sequences, and uniformly colored shape sequences. We characterised positional representations by applying parameterised behavioural representational similarity analysis to position-specific response distributions. Structured linguistic sequences produced a near-orthogonal geometry, indicating clearly separable local and global positional structure. Color-segmented shape sequences yielded a reduced-angle, reduced-scale geometry, suggesting weaker local-global organization; individual-level analyses further indicated that this intermediate group-level solution partly reflected participant-level heterogeneity. In contrast, scrambled linguistic and uniformly colored shape sequences were best described by one-dimensional solutions, implying that local and global dimensions were no longer separable when explicit boundary cues were absent. These findings suggest that chunking does not produce a uniform representational format in WM; instead, separable local-global structure depends on the source and strength of chunking cues.
Metacognitive processes may play a key role in how stereotype threat negatively affects memory in older adults. However, few studies have examined the effects of stereotype threat on metamemory in ageing, and findings remain inconsistent. We explored whether stereotype threat affects the two main dimensions of metamemory: monitoring and control, focusing on learning self-regulation through study time adjustment. Ninety-two older adults, randomly assigned to a stereotype threat or to a control condition, completed a study time allocation task in which task difficulty was manipulated by varying the strength of association between word pairs. Monitoring was assessed using Judgments of Learning (JOLs), and control through study-time adjustments according to task difficulty. Results indicated that stereotype threat had no significant effect on JOLs predictions, their accuracy, or on study time adjustment according to task difficulty. However, overall study time was higher in the threatened group than in the control one. Stereotype threat biased learning self-regulation, leading older adults to allocate additional study time. This reduced processing efficiency, as the threatened group needed to mobilise supplementary resources to achieve the same level of performance as the control group.
Prospective memory (PM) - remembering to perform future intentions (Rummel et al., 2023, Prospective memories in the wild: Predicting memory for intentions in natural environments. Memory & Cognition, 51(5), 1061-1075. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01379-y) - is essential for maintaining daily functioning and fulfilling important obligations (e.g., taking medication). Yet, various factors can lead to PM failures. Stress - the body's physiological response to a difficult situation/event (Stewart & McFarland, 2020, An investigation of the relations between stress and prospective memory. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 32(2), 131-145. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2020.1724116) - may be one such factor. Extant research into the stress-PM relationship is limited and yields ambiguous findings, primarily due to poor PM measurement validity. Therefore, our study aimed to examine whether acute and/or chronic stress (measured via stress response and stressor exposure) impair PM performance in everyday environments, using a predominately university-based sample. We developed a novel, ecologically valid paradigm - based on Actual Week (Rendell & Craik, 2000, Virtual week and actual week: Age-related differences in prospective memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14(7), S43-S62. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.770) - where participants performed a variety of researcher-assigned PM tasks over a four-day period. Overall, acute stress (i.e., our short-term stress indices, aggregated over four-evenings) did not correlate with PM performance, but chronic stressor exposure negatively correlated with PM performance; albeit with a small effect. Additionally, all stress measures were associated with impaired self-reported PM, suggesting that actual PM performance and perceived PM ratings show modest overlap, and likely tap into partially distinct aspects of PM. Our findings highlight the need for more accurate approaches of evaluating stress and PM in everyday life.
The fallibility of eyewitness memory has been demonstrated in decades of research. This presents a challenge to legal practitioners and triers of fact when evaluating the trustworthiness of eyewitness identification. A witness's initial confidence in their identification decision is a potentially useful indicator of accuracy. While the field generally agrees that there is a meaningful relationship between confidence and accuracy, uncertainty remains about whether high confidence can serve as a direct indicator of accuracy in real-world legal settings. In this review, we integrate findings on the confidence-accuracy (CA) relationship in eyewitness identification research with prevailing metacognitive theories of retrospective confidence and individual differences. We argue for greater consideration of the influence of individual-level factors - particularly metacognitive bias and domain-specific competence, which influence how effectively people monitor their memory - on the CA relationship. Understanding these variables may help answer the key question facing courts: given a witness's expressed confidence, how likely is it that their identification is correct? We discuss how measurement approaches from metacognitive research can be used to clarify when, and for whom, confidence reliably predicts accuracy and suggest future directions of research that may help better understand this question.
Beliefs about our memory can have consequences for how we act in our everyday life and in professional contexts, including what we expect from witnesses during interviews. Previous research has documented that the beliefs that professionals or laypeople hold regarding witnesses are not always aligned with science. While most studies have targeted beliefs about memory in general, fewer studies have tailored their questionnaires to map out beliefs about child witnesses. In this study, we surveyed 340 Danish professionals including police, psychologists, social workers, judges, defence attorneys, and prosecutors about their beliefs regarding children as witnesses. Since the main interest was to map out current beliefs held by the groups, we did not have predictions regarding specific items. However, since previous research has shown that beliefs held by various professional groups are not always aligned with science, this was also to be expected in this study. Overall, the results replicated earlier findings. It is noteworthy that a large proportion of respondents selected the response category "neither agree nor disagree". Furthermore, prior training was found to influence the responses. Key areas where an update of the knowledge base is deemed relevant are highlighted and future directions are discussed.
The present study was designed to investigate the proposition that personal-event memories and fictional-event memories are retrieved and structured, on the event level, in much the same way. We conducted three experiments using established methods for studying Autobiographical Memory (AM). Experiments 1 and 2 employed a timed word-cueing task with retrieval-strategy reports. All three experiments used an event-cueing task, collecting RTs, strategy reports, and event-pair relation endorsements. Experiment 1 compared AM with those extracted from a fictional source - in this case, the Harry Potter (HP) series. Experiments 2 and 3 focused exclusively on Potto-biographical memory. In Experiment 2, cue type (neutral vs. HP-specific) was manipulated and in Experiment 3, cue importance (important vs. unimportant) was manipulated. In general, HP and AM performance was similar. Direct retrieval was common when participants responded to word cues (ranging from 52% to 91% across conditions and experiments) and event cues (70% to 84%) and consistently faster than generative retrieval. Event cues often elicited cluster mates (50% to 75%). These results suggest shared core processes across event types that: (a) give rise to memorable event representations, (b) relate noteworthy representations to one another, and (c) enable people to access these representations directly when presented with relevant cues.
We investigated the impact of chunking on visual working memory (VWM) capacity and explored whether its benefits depend on the overlap between studied objects and retrieval probes. Informed by Fuzzy Trace Theory, we examined whether chunking real-world objects is a fully gist-reliant process or whether it preserves coarse- or fine-grained visual detail. To test this, participants completed four experiments involving object pairs that varied in conceptual and/or perceptual similarity. At test, they judged whether a probe was an "old" (studied) or "novel" (unseen) item. Some distractors were "related lures", similar to targets. We compared hit rates and false alarms across conditions (related vs. unrelated pairs), using a signal detection-inspired model. Item-specific and gist-based indices of memory detection showed that chunking enhances object memory for related object pairs, but probing memory with lures related to studied objects revealed that this benefit was largely attributable to gist-based and coarse-grained visual detail memory traces. The findings suggest that chunking based on object relatedness can increase VWM capacity, but at the cost of representing fine-grained visual details of chunked objects.
PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:This study tested the effect of a new memory training programme to facilitate memory retrieval. The programme improved memory performance in older adults, and its benefits generalised to social problem-solving abilities. Because social problem-solving was not directly trained, these results indicate transfer, highlighting the programme's potential for cognitive training interventions targeting older adults' cognitive health.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT06110234.
Previous research examining the directive function in autobiographical memory in college-aged participants found that recalling autobiographical memories related to physical activity was associated with an increase in subsequent physical activity. The current study, using an experimental test-retest design, examined whether this same effect was evident in a sample of adults aged 60 and older. At Time 1, participants (N = 451) were randomly assigned to the control or experimental groups and asked to complete a survey assessing physical activity and health; the experimental groups were asked to recall either a positive or negative motivational memory associated with exercise. Participants (N = 340) completed a similar survey seven days later. Levels of exercise were compared between Time 1 and Time 2 to examine whether the memory retrieval intervention had a significant impact on the level of physical activity. There was no significant main effect of memory condition on Time 2 physical activity, suggesting that the effect may not generalise to older adults. This null finding provides support for the assertion that the directive function may be more limited and specific than originally thought and that other factors may be more important for influencing behaviour (e.g., age-related differences in motivation).
In recent years, eyewitness experts have provided clear and consistent direction to the criminal justice community that if "pristine" non-suggestive procedures are used, high confidence suspect-identifications imply accuracy: Not a perfect relationship, but much stronger than previously thought. However, when suggestion is present, high-confidence suspect identifications no longer provide reliable evidence of accuracy. Recently, some experts have promoted a much broader picture of how and when confidence implies accuracy to the legal community, noting that confidence can still reliably predict accuracy even when suggestive procedures like showups are used. Although this observation is statistically correct, its practical meaning may be lost in translation to legal audiences, who may interpret this as support for treating high-confidence showup identifications as strong evidence of witness accuracy. In this paper, we argue for researchers to be cautious in how they disseminate research results to clearly specify the limitations on how new findings can be used to evaluate eyewitness evidence in court. In making this argument, we review findings from numerous experiments employing the field-simulation paradigm, which clearly illustrate a situation where a positive correlation between confidence and accuracy exists, but at the same time, nearly half of all false-identifications are made with 90-100% confidence.
Remembering valuable information is important in one's daily life. Although reward has been shown to enhance true memory through value-directed remembering, its effect on false memory, especially in the long term, is not well understood. We combined the pictorial DRM paradigm with a reward-learning task to investigate the effect of reward on false memory and its persistence over time. In Experiment 1, certain lists of pictures were rewarded, while others were not, then participants' memories were tested immediately, 1 d later, or 1 week later. In Experiment 2, lists were associated with either a high or low reward. Results from two experiments consistently showed that reward not only enhanced false recognition for lure pictures but also significantly increased false binding between lure pictures and reward, forming false rewarding memories. Importantly, this reward-enhanced false memory effect persisted even after one week, whereas true memories of reward decreased over time. Our results suggest a critical role of time in shaping both false and true episodic memories of reward experiences.
Although a substantial body of research has demonstrated a processing advantage for threatening entities compared to nonthreatening ones in adults, very few studies have investigated the effect of threat on memory processes in children. The present study aimed to address this gap by testing memory for dangerous entities and their locations in 88 children aged 5-10 years. To do so, the children played Memory games on a digital tablet. Location memory was assessed by recording the number of errors made when matching card pairs. Item memory was assessed using a free recall task administered after the Memory game session. The results revealed a significant threat superiority effect for both item and location memory. Specifically, dangerous animals were remembered better than nondangerous ones as early as age 5. Location memory advantages for threatening items emerged by the age of 8. Further analysis showed significant relationships between memory performance and the emotional dimensions of the stimuli (arousal and emotional intensity). Finally, modern threats were recalled better than evolutionary threats, although no differences were observed in location memory. Overall, these findings provide further evidence to support the idea that threatening information has an adaptive value in memory processes during childhood.
Recalling either a specific (unique, 24 h or less) turning point memory narrative or a turning point with greater episodic detail (who, when, where and what happened) has been shown to predict higher youth depressive symptoms. The current research with emerging adults (N = 195, M = 20.5 years), therefore examined first the relationships of specific and detailed turning points with depressive symptoms, and second, whether recollective memory qualities moderated the association. We hypothesised that both a specific turning point and greater episodic detail would each predict depressive symptoms when rated as more vivid, emotionally intense, intrusive, negative valence for self, and recalled with greater negative emotions. Moderation results partially supported our predictions. The positive association between specific turning points and depressive symptoms was significant only under high ratings of intrusiveness, negative valence for self, and a greater proportion of negative emotions during recall. In addition, the positive association between episodic detail and depressive symptoms was significant only under greater negative emotions during recall, whereas other self-ratings were not significant moderators. These findings shed light on the critical role of negative affect in the relationship between specific and detailed turning point narratives and higher concurrent depressive symptoms in emerging adults.
