Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal events that come to mind spontaneously—that is, with no conscious initiation of the retrieval process. Such spontaneously arising memories were long ignored in cognitive psychology, which generally has focused on controlled and strategic forms of remembering, studied in laboratory settings. Recent evidence shows that involuntary memories of past events are highly frequent in daily life, and that they represent a context-sensitive, and associative way of recollecting past events that involves little executive control. They operate by constraints that favour recent events and events with a distinct feature overlap to the current situation, which optimizes the probability of functional relevance to the ongoing situation. In addition to adults, they are documented in young children and great apes and may be an ontogenetic and evolutionary forerunner of strategic retrieval of past events. Findings suggest that intrusive involuntary memories observed clinically after traumatic events should be viewed as a dysfunctional subclass of otherwise functional involuntary autobiographical memories. Because of their highly constrained, situation-dependent and automatic nature, involuntary autobiographical memories form a distinct category of spontaneous thought that cannot be equated with mind wandering. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.
Involuntary autobiographical memories and their relation to other forms of spontaneous thoughts
Published 2020 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2020
- Venue
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences
- Publication date
2020-12-14
- Fields of study
Medicine, Psychology
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
CITATION MAP
EXTRACTION MAP
CLAIMS
CONCEPTS
- current situation
The ongoing external context in which a memory may be triggered and evaluated for relevance.
Aliases: ongoing situation
- executive control
Top-down cognitive control processes that support deliberate, strategic retrieval and regulation.
Aliases: executive function control
- feature overlap
Shared perceptual or situational features between a remembered event and the current context.
Aliases: distinct feature overlap
- great apes
Nonhuman primates closely related to humans and included as a comparative population.
- intrusive involuntary memories
Unwanted memory intrusions that arise without intent, typically discussed in relation to traumatic experiences.
Aliases: memory intrusions
- involuntary autobiographical memories
Spontaneous memories of personal events that come to mind without deliberate initiation of retrieval.
Aliases: IAMs
- mind wandering
Self-generated thought that drifts away from the immediate external task or situation.
Aliases: task-unrelated thought
- recency
A temporal property indicating how recently an event occurred, used here as a retrieval constraint.
Aliases: recentness
- spontaneous thoughts
Thoughts that arise without deliberate conscious initiation and are not fully controlled by strategic retrieval.
Aliases: spontaneous thought
- strategic retrieval of past events
Deliberate, controlled remembering of prior events guided by conscious search and selection.
Aliases: strategic remembering
- traumatic events
Highly distressing events that can be followed by persistent involuntary memory intrusions.
Aliases: trauma
- young children
Early developmental stage of humans included as a group in which the phenomenon is observed.
REFERENCES
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