Abstract
Recent research has shown that the activation of semantic memories leads to the activation of autobiographical memories. Known as semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming, this form of priming has been demonstrated to prime involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories with a wide variety of different primes (i.e., various verbal and non-verbal stimuli). However, only verbal cues have been used in the memory measures, leaving open the question of how non-verbal cues might function. Our goal in the current study was to show that non-verbal cues are also involved in semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming. Participants were primed with words, and then they were treated to an involuntary autobiographical memory task (the vigilance task) where they received either word cues or pictorial cues. The results showed that both the word cues and the pictorial cues had captured primed involuntary memories on the vigilance task relative to controls. The results support the idea that semantic-to-autobiographical memory primes occur with both verbal and non-verbal cues, potentially indicating substantial cue diversity. The results also further support the idea that semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming may play an important role in the production of involuntary autobiographical memories in everyday life.
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Notes
Readers not familiar with the literature on involuntary autobiographical memories (also known as involuntary memories) are referred to comprehensive reviews in Berntsen (2009, 2010) and Mace (2007, 2018). Here we use the term involuntary memory to refer to autobiographical memories that come unintentionally without deliberate attempts to recall or other forms of forethought.
The vigilance task elicits involuntary autobiographical memories by presenting participants with slides containing horizontal or vertical lines with embedded verbal cues. The embedded cues have been shown to occasionally elicit spontaneous memories and thoughts throughout the task (e.g., Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008).
The cue type data were extracted from the SuperLab data file for each participant. These files indicated which slides were stopped by participants. Independent judges classified the cues by merely checking which predetermined cue categories stopped slides belonged to.
An interesting parallel can be found in Kvavilashvili and Mandler (2004), who showed that a significant amount of everyday involuntary semantic memories was primed by prior stimuli.
See Mazzoni et al. (2014), who provide a number of potential explanations for their findings.
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Mace, J.H., Ostermeier, K.L. Obtaining semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming on the vigilance task with non-verbal cues. Mem Cogn (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01547-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01547-2