Authors' contributions: OL-F (principal investigator) wrote the first draft, with CD and LJ, who supported the statistical analysis and initial interpretation of the data. JB, DJK, HMP, MDG and OL-F supported the review of the second draft. JB, AS, MDG, and OL-F also supported the review of the third draft. All authors reviewed the manuscript adding comments and suggestions and oversaw the second and third drafts. All co-authors contributed to adapting the short version of the CIUS into their 3 languages, collecting data in their respective countries, and revising the subsequent versions until the final write-up of the manuscript.

The prevalence of mobile phone use across the world has increased greatly over the past two decades. Problematic Mobile Phone Use (PMPU) has been studied in relation to public health and comprises various behaviours, including dangerous, prohibited, and dependent use. These types of problematic mobile phone behaviours are typically assessed with the short version of the Problematic Mobile Phone Use Questionnaire (PMPUQ–SV). However, to date, no study has ever examined the degree to which the PMPU scale assesses the same construct across different languages. The aims of the present study were to (i) determine an optimal factor structure for the PMPUQ–SV among university populations using eight versions of the scale (i.e., French, German, Hungarian, English, Finnish, Italian, Polish, and Spanish); and (ii) simultaneously examine the measurement invariance (MI) of the PMPUQ–SV across all languages. The whole study sample comprised 3038 participants. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were extracted from the demographic and PMPUQ-SV items. Individual and multigroup confirmatory factor analyses alongside MI analyses were conducted. Results showed a similar pattern of PMPU across the translated scales. A three-factor model of the PMPUQ-SV fitted the data well and presented with good psychometric properties. Six languages were validated independently, and five were compared via measurement invariance for future cross-cultural comparisons. The present paper contributes to the assessment of problematic mobile phone use because it is the first study to provide a cross-cultural psychometric analysis of the PMPUQ-SV.

The self-memory system model of autobiographical memory has been highly influential in providing a framework in which to locate a wide range of research findings from neuropsychology, psychological illness, behavioral findings, to attachment and personality research. Here the authors update the model and clarify some common misunderstandings. They review the extensive and relatively recent findings from neuroimaging studies that have provided a striking brain basis for the model, update neuropsychological findings, and develop the model to apply to future thinking. Finally, they delineate a small set of fundamental problems suggested by these developments of the model.

Memory experts, the police and the public completed a memory questionnaire containing a series of statements about autobiographical memory. The statements covered issues such as the nature of memory, determinants of accuracy and the relation of emotion and trauma to memory, and respondents indicated their agreement/disagreement with each of the statements. The police and public were found to share a ‘common sense’ memory belief system (CSMBS) in which memories were like videos/photographs, and accuracy was determined by the number of details recalled and also by their vividness. In direct contrast, the scientific memory belief system, held by memory researchers, largely based on scientific evidence, was the opposite of the CSMBS and memories were judged to be fragmentary, number of details and their nature did not predict accuracy, and memories and their details could be in error and even false. The problematic nature of the CSMBS, which is pervasive in society, in raising the probability of flawed judgments of memory evidence is considered and, by way of illustration, applied to the (very high) attrition rate in complaints of rape.

The perspective in which memories were spontaneously recalled, field (original perspective) or observer (see oneself in the memory), was examined for both recent and remote memories. Recent memories were dominated by field perspective whilst remote memories were dominated by observer perspective. Further, field memories contained reliably more episodic detail than observer memories. After a 1-week interval, the same memories were recalled again but with a switched memory perspective. Switching from an observer to a field perspective did not reliably increase the amount of episodic details in a memory. Switching from field to observer perspective did, however, reliably reduce the number of episodic details. These findings suggest that memories may be represented in long-term memory with a fixed perspective, either field or observer, which can be temporarily altered sometimes changing the nature of a memory, i.e. how much detail remains accessible.