School of Psychology, Deakin University, 1 Gherinhap St, Geelong, VIC, 3220, Australia.
Cogn Process. 2022 Feb;23(1):15-25. doi: 10.1007/s10339-021-01067-w. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
Episodic specificity inductions, involving brief training in recollecting episodic details, have been shown to improve subsequent performance on tasks involving remembering the past, imagining the future and problem solving. The current study examined if specificity inductions targeting self-referential past or future episodic thinking would have dissociable effects on generating past and future episodic detail and problem solving. Sixty-three participants were randomised to either a past self-referential or future self-referential episodic induction. All participants also completed a control task. Participants randomised to the self-referential future thinking induction generated more episodic details on past and future narrative tasks compared to a control task, whereas participants randomised to a self-referential past thinking induction showed similar performance to the control task. When examining within-group performance of participants randomised to the past or future induction, we found some evidence of dissociable effects of inductions on narrative generation tasks, but not on problem solving outcomes. Our findings suggest that self-referential inductions may be useful for increasing episodic specificity, but that the temporal distance and direction of the induction matters. We discuss our results in the context of the potential clinical utility of this approach for populations vulnerable to autobiographical memory disruption.
情节特异性诱导，包括短暂的回忆情节细节的训练，已被证明可以提高后续回忆过去、想象未来和解决问题的任务表现。本研究考察了针对自我参照过去或未来情节思维的特异性诱导是否会对生成过去和未来情节细节以及解决问题产生分离的影响。63 名参与者被随机分配到自我参照过去或自我参照未来情节诱导组。所有参与者还完成了一个控制任务。与控制任务相比，随机分配到自我参照未来思维诱导组的参与者在过去和未来的叙事任务中生成了更多的情节细节，而随机分配到自我参照过去思维诱导组的参与者与控制任务的表现相似。当我们检查随机分配到过去或未来诱导组的参与者的组内表现时，我们发现诱导对叙事生成任务的分离效应存在一些证据，但对解决问题的结果没有证据。我们的研究结果表明，自我参照诱导可能有助于增加情节特异性，但诱导的时间距离和方向很重要。我们在这种方法对易受自传体记忆障碍影响的人群的潜在临床应用背景下讨论了我们的结果。
