Ways of searching and the contents of memory

Linton, Marigold

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511558313.007

Cited by 198 publications

(164 citation statements)

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“…This phenomenon has variously been called passive memories (Roberts, McGinnis, & Bladt, 1994;Spence, 1988), involuntary remembering (Winograd, 1993), remindings (Shank, 1982), mind popping (Mandler, 1994), 'thoughts that come unbidden' (Linton, 1986), and involuntary autobiographical memories (Berntsen, 1996;. The latter term seems to be most appropriate as such memories (both specific and generic) almost always refer to experiences from one's own personal past.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of one’s mind: A study of involuntary semantic memories

Kvavilashvili

Mandler

2004

Cognitive Psychology

198

209

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The study of memories that pop into one's mind without any conscious attempt to retrieve them began only recently. While there are some studies on involuntary autobiographical memories (e.g., Berntsen, 1996; research on involuntary semantic memories or mind-popping is virtually non existent. The latter is defined as an involuntary conscious occurrence of brief items of one's network of semantic knowledge. The recall of these items (e.g., a word, a name, a tune) is not accompanied by additional contextual information and/or involvement of self -a standard feature of involuntary autobiographical memories. The paper reports several diary and questionnaire studies which looked into the nature and frequency of occurrence of these memories. The data show that people do experience involuntary semantic memories which tend to occur without any apparent cues while being engaged in relatively automatic activities. Possible mechanisms of involuntary semantic memories are discussed (e.g., very long-term priming), and the results of the study provide information on the possible duration of the priming effects in everyday life.Related theoretical and methodological issues and future avenues of research in this neglected area are outlined.KEY WORDS: Involuntary memories, mind-popping, autobiographical memory, semantic memory, very long-term priming, implicit memory. 3Out of one's mind: A study of involuntary semantic memories Most laboratory studies of memory investigate processes which deliberately retrieve or identify information acquired in the past. However, much of our everyday remembering consists of information coming to mind involuntarily, i.e., without any conscious attempts to retrieve anything (Mandler, 1986; Winograd, 1993). This type of retrieval has been noted as far back as by Ebbinghaus (1885Ebbinghaus ( /1964 who, among other forms of memory, delineated memories which occur "with apparent spontaneity and without any act of will", and are "brought about through the instrumentality of other, immediately present mental images" (p. 2). Mandler (1989) claimed that "deliberate retrieval of information seems to be the exception rather than the rule" (p. 103). Thus, "we interrupt our stream of thought with ideas that suddenly 'come to mind', we are frequently 'reminded' of one or another occurrence in the past, and often we are aware of memories whose apparent irrelevance to the requirements of the moment surprises us" (p. 291, Mandler, 1986; our italics).Involuntary memories vary greatly in their character and conditions under which they occur (see Mandler, 1994). For example, the phenomenon of incubation, or a sudden recovery from the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state, or the realization that one had intended to do something at this particular moment (i.e., prospective remembering) -all refer to involuntary retrieval of certain memories and contents.Although the act of retrieval per se is non deliberate and usually sudden, in all those cases it is preceded by repeated attempts to solve a problem (incubation), by a memory...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of one’s mind: A study of involuntary semantic memories

Kvavilashvili

Mandler

2004

Cognitive Psychology

198

209

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“…Specific memories take longer to retrieve in response to affect cues than they do to activity and object cues (Robinson, 1976) or lifetime periods (Conway & Bekerian, 1987), and although Linton (1986) placed valence at the top of her hierarchy, she found emotion labels themselves to be very poor memory cues, as others have also found (Beike, Adams & Wirth-Beaumont, 2007;Reiser, Black & Abelson, 1985).…”

Section: Emotion and Autobiographical Memorymentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Although Linton (1986) and Barsalou (1988) use idiosyncratic terms and describe slightly different structures, they both identify a hierarchical template that was confirmed in Conway and Rubin"s (1993) review of the literature, which concluded that autobiographical knowledge could be represented at three broad levels of specificity; lifetime periods, general events, and event-specific knowledge.…”

Section: The Structural Distinctionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Events at this level may represent composite memories abstracted from many related experiences, described as categoric ("Times I have fallen downstairs"; Williams & Dritschel, 1992) or summarised ("late night parties"; Barsalou, 1988) events. Extended events might feature self-contained personal histories ("holiday with Jenny"; Conway & Bekerian, 1987) which Schooler and Herrmann (1992) call episodes and which Linton (1986) refers to as both episodes and events. Another type of general event is made up of multiple superimposed instances of a single episode which Neisser (1981) termed repisodes.…”

Section: The Structural Distinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Events at this level have been called details (Linton, 1986;Tulving, 1972), moments (Schooler & Herrmann, 1992) or phenomenological records (Conway, 1992). What characterises events at this level is that they are typically accompanied by imagery and other perceptual details (Brewer, 1986;Rubin, 1996) and although such events do not usually make effective retrieval cues under normal circumstances (Conway & Bekerian, 1987;Reiser et al, 1985) they may be vividly remembered when they concern exceptionally shocking (Brown & Kulik, 1977) or personally important (Pillemer, 1998;Rubin & Kozin, 1984) events.…”

Section: The Structural Distinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regret as autobiographical memory

Davison

Feeney

2008

Cognitive Psychology

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Event cueing, event clusters, and the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories

Brown

Schopflocher

1998

Appl. Cognit. Psychol.

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This article provides an overview of a series of event‐cueing experiments conducted to investigate how autobiographical memory is organized at the event level. In these experiments, participants first generate a set of personal events (cueing events) and then respond to each by retrieving a second event memory (the cued event). Subsequently, relations between cued and cueing events are coded, and all events are dated and rated for importance. This approach has produced two general findings. First, we have found that event memories are often embedded in narrative‐like event clusters. Second, across experiments, we have observed large, systematic differences in the temporal distribution of the event pairs. In this article, we review evidence concerning the organizational importance of event clusters. We then examine the temporal distributions obtained from three representative experiments and account for the marked differences in these distributions by considering how task demands, memory structures, and response strategies affect retrieval from autobiographical memory. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Ways of searching and the contents of memory

Cited by 198 publications

References 0 publications

Out of one’s mind: A study of involuntary semantic memories

Out of one’s mind: A study of involuntary semantic memories

Regret as autobiographical memory

Event cueing, event clusters, and the temporal distribution of autobiographical memories

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