Department of NEUROFARBA-Section of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2014 Apr 9;9(4):e89582. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089582. eCollection 2014.
Recent studies have shown that involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) can be elicited in the laboratory. Here we assessed whether the specific instructions given to participants can change the nature of the IAMs reported, in terms of both their frequency and their characteristics. People were either made or not made aware that the aim of the study was to examine IAMs. They reported mental contents either whenever they became aware of them or following a predetermined schedule. Both making people aware of the aim of the study and following a fixed schedule of interruptions increased significantly the number of IAMs reported. When aware of the aim of the study, participants reported more specific memories that had been retrieved and rehearsed more often in the past. These findings demonstrate that the number and characteristics of memories depend on the procedure used. Explanations of these effects and their implications for research on IAMs are discussed.
最近的研究表明，非自愿自传体记忆（IAM）可以在实验室中引发。在这里，我们评估了向参与者提供的特定说明是否可以改变报告的 IAM 的性质，无论是在频率还是特征方面。人们要么意识到研究的目的是检查 IAM，要么没有意识到。他们要么随时报告他们意识到的心理内容，要么按照预定的时间表报告。让人们意识到研究的目的并按照固定的中断时间表进行操作，都会显著增加报告的 IAM 数量。当参与者意识到研究的目的时，他们报告了更多过去检索和排练次数更多的特定记忆。这些发现表明，记忆的数量和特征取决于所使用的程序。讨论了这些效应的解释及其对 IAM 研究的影响。
