Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2012 Sep;38(5):1296-308. doi: 10.1037/a0028142. Epub 2012 Apr 30.
In this study, we used process measures to understand how people recall autobiographical memories in response to different word cues. In Experiment 1, participants provided verbal protocols when cued by object and emotion words. Participants also reported whether memories had come directly to mind. The self-reports and independent ratings of the verbal protocols indicated that directly recalled memories are much faster and more frequent than generated memories and are more prevalent when cued by objects than emotions. Experiment 2 replicated these results without protocols to eliminate any demand characteristics or output interference associated with the protocol method. In Experiment 3, we obtained converging results using a different method for assessing retrieval strategies by asking participants to assess the amount of information required to retrieve memories. The greater proportion of fast direct retrievals when memories are cued by objects accounts for reaction time differences between object and emotion cues, and not the commonly accepted explanation based on ease of retrieval. We argue for a dual-strategies approach that disputes generation as the canonical form of autobiographical memory retrieval and discuss the implication of these findings for the representation of personal events in autobiographical memory.
在这项研究中，我们使用过程测量来理解人们如何响应不同的单词提示来回忆自传体记忆。在实验 1 中，参与者在被物体和情绪词提示时提供口头报告。参与者还报告记忆是否直接出现在脑海中。自我报告和口头报告的独立评分表明，直接回忆的记忆比生成的记忆更快、更频繁，并且在被物体提示时比被情绪提示时更为常见。实验 2 复制了这些结果，没有使用协议来消除与协议方法相关的任何需求特征或输出干扰。在实验 3 中，我们使用一种不同的方法来评估检索策略，通过要求参与者评估检索记忆所需的信息量，获得了收敛的结果。当记忆被物体提示时，快速直接检索的比例较大，这解释了物体和情绪提示之间的反应时差异，而不是基于检索容易程度的常见解释。我们提出了一种双重策略方法，该方法质疑生成作为自传体记忆检索的典型形式，并讨论了这些发现对自传体记忆中个人事件表示的影响。
