THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Involuntary Retrieval from Autobiographical Memory and The Nature of Cues being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Hull by Iram Batool Supervisor: Prof. Giuliana Mazzoni March 2013 Abstract The present thesis starts by exploring the possibility of eliciting involuntary autobiographical memories (ABMs) in the laboratory, as a preliminary step in studying the retrieval process of involuntary ABMs. The main aim of the thesis is to test whether involuntary AMBs (IAMs) can be successfully elicited in the lab, to assess whether cue manipulation changes the patterns of memories reported, and to compare IAMs and voluntary ABMs. We adopted the basic experimental paradigm recently developed by Schlagman & Kvavilashvili (2008) with a slight but important modification to it. A series of seven experiments were conducted and a total of 310 participants, participated in these experiments. Results of Experiments 1 indicate that instructing participants about involuntary memories increased significantly the number of involuntary memories reported. A clear increase in memories was obtained also when the interruptions were scheduled by the experimenter. These results indicate that the amount and type of involuntary memories depends strongly on the method used to elicit these memories. Three subsequent experiments (Exp, 2, 3, 4) have been devised to examine whether it is possible that by manipulating the cues in an experimental setting, different numbers of involuntary autobiographical memories are elicited, and memories have different qualities. The results of both experiments 2 and 3 confirm that pictorial cues are less effective in triggering IAMs than the verbal cues of the same items. In Experiment 4 we tested the possibility that concrete verbal material elicits more memories than abstract verbal material. The results of this study indicated that cconcrete verbal cues elicited more than twice as many IAMs than abstract verbal cues, showing that a clear concreteness effect was found when retrieval is involuntary. To explorethe role of additionalvisual details and the distinctivenessof the items in a visual cue in triggering involuntary autobiographicalmemories, Experiment 5 was conducted. We found that the addition of visual details did not have a significant effect on the number of reported IAMs. In Experiment 6 we examined if adding a relatively specific detail to the cue would enhance the likelihood for that cue to trigger an involuntary memory. The results of this study showed that adding specific details to a cue tends to enhance the possibility to retrieve involuntary memories for personal events, although the results ii are not significant. To assess whether the effect of the concreteness/imageability of the cues observed in involuntary memory retrieval can be obtained in a parallel task in which autobiographical memories are obtained through voluntary retrieval we ran the last experiment (Exp 7) in the dissertation. The results of this experiment confirm the difference in effectiveness between concrete/high imagery and abstract/low imagery cues alreadyfound in Experiment 4. The results of Experiment 7 show that concrete cues are more effective in general, independently of the type of retrieval, whether involuntary or voluntary. Overall, these results indicate that involuntary memories can be elicited in a lab setting, that by manipulating the cues one manipulates also the number and characteristics of involuntary memories. In addition and unexpectedly, involuntary memories are about general and single events. This result is the opposite of what has been known from diary studies about IAMs, which have been reported as being more specific compared to voluntary memories. We offer a number of explanations of why IAMs are less specific than voluntary memories. However, being post-hoc explanations, work still needs to be done to assess them in a direct way. Iram Batool iii Dedicated To the hard times of my life which strengthen me and enable me to achieve my goals iv Acknowledgements In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful Alhamdulillah, all praises to Allah who has granted me this opportunity and always be source of strength. I have no words to say thanks to my ALLAH for answering my prayers, showing me path in darkness and always keep me composed when I shatter in the moments of grief and disappointment. Once again thank you so much my dear Lord, I am grateful for all your blessings. First and foremost, I would like to express my very great appreciation to Professor Giuliana Mazzoni for her valuable and constructive suggestions, patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques throughout this research work. She was source of inspiration and her constant support enables me to deal with all the obstacles in the completion of this research work. She was always available with her deep insights and generous guidance whenever I needed. I would also like to say thanks to Prof. Irving kirsch for his precious time and fruitful advices time to time. I am sincerely grateful to the Bahauddin Zakariyya University Multan, government of Pakistan for their financial support in the form of a scholarship to undertake this study. My acknowledgement also goes to all the staff of Psychology department, University of Hull for their co-operations. I would like to express my special thanks to Trevor and Chan for their technical support. No words can express and no deeds can return the love, affection, amiable attitude, sacrifices, advices, unceasing prayers, support, and inspiration that my Parents and my brothers infused in me during my whole academic career. I have no doubt to say that I have best father and mother, and they are very special blessing of ALLAH for me. They always strengthen my faith v and always enhance my self-confidence. My deepest gratitude goes to my beloved brothers, my nearest surrenders. Their everlasting love and continuous support led me to the highest pursuits of life. I always found Mane and Saq standing beside me on every tough moments of my life. My deepest and special gratitude to my husband and Kids. Zahoor’s patient love, all his emotional and financial support enabled me to complete this study. I would rather say that without his sincere support, it was impossible for me to achieve this goal. My beloved daughters Fatima and Maleeha suffered a lot during this period it would be unfair if I do not mention them. I will always remember every moment of their innocent support during this period. I would also like to mention my special thanks to my friends especially, Shafqat, Safia and Mah-e-rukh for being such wonderful friends. I never forget their support and kindness. Very special thanks to Jehan Bahader and Niaz bhai. I would also like to thank my Turkish friend Suzan. I am grateful to you all for helping me get through the difficult times, and for all moral support, camaraderie, entertainment, and caring you provided. Last but not the least, to those who indirectly contributed in this research, your kindness means a lot to me. Thank you very much. vi List of Figures Figure 1.1: A categorization schema for involuntary and voluntary remembering along an intentionality continuum. Figure1.2: The autobiographical memory knowledge. Figure 2.1: A brief description of involuntary and voluntary recall vii List of Tables Table 3.1: Descriptive data (means and standard deviations) for all dependent measures. Table 4.1: Percentage of specific memories (standard deviations in parenthesis), and mean characteristics ratings in all involuntary memories, and in the subset triggered by the cues, as a function of cue type (verbal cues vs. pictures). Table 4.2: Percentage of specific memories (standard deviations in parenthesis), and mean characteristics ratings in all involuntary memories, and in the subset triggered by the cues, as a function of cue type (verbal cues vs. pictures). Table 4.3: Percentage of specific memories (standard deviations in parenthesis), and mean characteristics ratings in all involuntary memories, and in the subset triggered by the cues, as a function of cue type (concrete/high-imaginable vs. abstract/low- imaginable verbal cues). Table5. 1: Mean and standard deviation of characteristics of memory for Experiment 5 Table5.2: Mean and standard deviation of characteristics of memory for Experiment 6 Table 6.1: Mean and standard deviation of characteristics of memory for Experiment 7. Session 1 (Involuntary autobiographical memories). Table 6.2: Mean and standard deviation of characteristics of memory for Experiment 7. Session 2 (Voluntary autobiographical memories). Table 6.3: Mean and standard deviation of high performance cue words on memorability and importance of event. viii List of Graph Graph 3.1 Number of IAMs among four groups Graph 4.1 IAMs triggered by Verbal Vs Visual cues Graph 4.2 IAMs triggered by simple Verbal Vs Simple Visual cues Graph 4.3 IAMs triggered by concrete Vs abstract cues (on total no.of memories) Graph 4.4 IAMs triggered by the cues (concrete vs. abstract cues) Graph5.1IAMs triggeredby pictureswithand withoutbackground Graph 5.2 IAMs triggered by with detail words Vs without details words ix Contents Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................... v Chapter: 1....................................................................................................................................1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................1