The roles of gender and temporal distance in the recall of dissonant self-related memories

How suspense and surprise enhance subsequent memory: the case of the 2016 United States Presidential Election

We examined whether the retroactive enhancement effect - i.e., improved memory accuracy for event details occurring before a surprising moment - would be present in participants' memory for details in their private lives following a surprising and suspenseful public event. To equate event type across participants, we selected when they first learned the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election. Participants self-divided into those who viewed the outcome as positive, negative, or neutral, while we experimentally divided them into those whose memory was assessed 6 or 12 months post-election. We assessed their accuracy for details surrounding the election and their phenomenological experience of learning the outcome, including emotional tension, our operationalisation of suspense. We found participants' memory characteristics were strongly related to their level of tension and shock, irrespective of valence. We also observed uniformly high accuracy regarding details about the weather participants experienced in their ZIP codes on election day. While these results intimated about the presence of retroactive enhancement, Experiment 2 examined the effect more directly by comparing participants' memory for the 2016 Election with two other politically-relevant events that provoked less tense reactions. The results revealed retroactive enhancement is dependent upon experiencing a surprising moment amidst a suspenseful event.

Gender identity better than sex explains individual differences in episodic and semantic components of autobiographical memory: An fMRI study

Advances in the literature of sex-related differences in autobiographical memory increasingly tend to highlight the importance of psychosocial factors such as gender identity, which may explain these differences better than sex as a biological factor. To date, however, none of these behavioral studies have investigated this hypothesis using neuroimaging. The purpose of this fMRI study is to examine for the first time sex and gender identity-related differences in episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in healthy participants (M=19, W=18). No sex-related differences were found; however, sex-related effects of masculine and feminine gender identity were identified in men and women independently. These results confirm the hypothesis that differences in episodic and semantic autobiographical memory are best explained by gender but are an interaction between biological sex and gender identity and extend these findings to the field of neuroimaging. We discuss the importance of hormonal factors to be taken into consideration in the future.

Through the gateway of the senses: investigating the influence of sensory modality-specific retrieval cues on involuntary episodic memory

Involuntary memories are memories of past events that come to mind with no preceding attempts of retrieval. They typically arise in response to situational cues, but little is known as to how such cues modulate involuntary memories. Here, we examined how the sensory modality of the cues affects involuntary memory frequency and content. Participants watched first-person perspective films and were later presented with visuospatial and/or auditory cues from the films. We then assessed their experience of involuntary memories for other moments from the films. Across Experiments 1 and 2, visuospatial cues resulted in a greater frequency of involuntary memories, and produced memories with a higher proportion of visual content. In Experiment 3, this effect was replicated using a more auditorily engaging film and occurred whether participants focused on the film's auditory or visual components, but was more pronounced when there was a match between encoding fixation and the retrieval cue. These findings suggest that visuospatial cues may outshine auditory cues in terms of involuntary memory elicitation and content.

My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images

Numerous studies on episodic future thinking have demonstrated that individuals perceive their future as more positive and idyllic than their past. It has been suggested that this positivity bias might serve a self-enhancement function. Yet, conflicting findings and lack of systematic studies on the generalizability of the phenomenon leave this interpretation uncertain. We provide the first systematic examination of the positivity bias across different domains and tasks of future thinking. First, we use the same tasks in two different domains of future thinking, representing an episodic (events) and a semantic dimension (self-images), respectively. Second, we use two different measures of positivity bias (i.e., frequency of positive versus negative instances and their distance from present). Third, we contrast each measure in each domain for events/self-images related to self versus an acquaintance. Experiments 1 and 2 showed a strong, general tendency for the generation of positive future events/self-images, but most pronounced for self, relative to an acquaintance. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that positive future events/self-images were dated closer to present, whereas negative ones were pushed further into the future, but only for self and not for an acquaintance. Our results support the idea that the positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and that this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic. The findings add to our understanding of the motivational functions served by different forms of future thoughts in relation to the self.

Commitment in romantic relationships as a function of partners' encoding of important couple-related memories

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how significant couple-related events are encoded in the episodic memory of each partner of a romantic relationship and how they relate to each of these partners' level of commitment in an independent and additive fashion. Each partner of a couple reported a significant couple-related memory and rated their level of need satisfaction experienced during the event of the memory. In addition, each partner was shown his/her partner's memory and also rated their own level of need satisfaction for this event. Results showed that partners need satisfaction ratings of their own memory positively predicted their own commitment to the relationship directly (for women) as well as through their need satisfaction generally experienced in the relationship (for men). In addition, men's need satisfaction ratings of their own memory were associated with women's commitment while controlling for women's need satisfaction ratings of men's memory, but no such cross-partner effects were found for women. Overall, the findings shed light on an initial understanding of how a person's own memory of an event can impact another person's attitudes even when taking into account this other person's memory encoding of that same event.

Gender, experimenter gender and medium of report influence the content of autobiographical memory report

In this study, we examined the role of context in autobiographical memory narratives, specifically as it pertains to gender among emerging adults. Male and female participants reported stressful events in their lives in the presence of an experimenter, and were randomly assigned either to report events verbally or type them, and to report in the presence of a male or female experimenter. Narratives were coded for factual and interpretive content. Results revealed that men verbally reporting to women reported longer narratives than all other groups. Women's narrative length did not vary by medium of report or conversational partner, but women used proportionally fewer internal state phrases when verbally reporting to men than when reporting to women. Women also used proportionally fewer evaluative statements in verbal reports than in typed narratives. Of these important interactions among context, gender, and experimenter gender, some findings, such as men's longer narratives and women's reduced internal states, were counter to expectations. These findings highlight the importance of methodological influences in autobiographical memory studies, in regard to both the context generated by experimental methods, and how gender differences are understood.

The frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and future thoughts in relation to daydreaming, emotional distress, and age

We introduce a new scale, the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory (IAMI), for measuring the frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and involuntary future thoughts. Using the scale in relation to other psychometric and demographic measures provided three important, novel findings. First, the frequency of involuntary and voluntary memories and future thoughts are similarly related to general measures of emotional distress. This challenges the idea that the involuntary mode is uniquely associated with emotional distress. Second, the frequency of involuntary autobiographical remembering does not decline with age, whereas measures of daydreaming, suppression of unwanted thoughts and dissociative experiences all do. Thus, involuntary autobiographical remembering relates differently to aging than daydreaming and other forms of spontaneous and uncontrollable thoughts. Third, unlike involuntary autobiographical remembering, the frequency of future thoughts does decrease with age. This finding underscores the need for examining past and future mental time travel in relation to aging and life span development.