Intention and Monitoring Influence the Content of Memory Reports

Abstract

Objectives

While voluntary memories are intended and expected, involuntary memories are retrieved with no intention and are usually unexpected (when one is not waiting for a memory). The present study investigates the effects of retrieval intentionality (wanting to retrieve a memory) and monitoring processes (expecting a memory to appear) on the characteristics of autobiographical memories.

Methods

To this end, by applying mixed-method analysis of memory descriptions (i.e. combining qualitative with quantitative analyses) we re-analysed the large pool of involuntary and voluntary memories obtained in one previously published study, asking independent judges to rate all the memories on several dimensions reflecting memory accessibility (i.e. the likelihood that a memory can be retrieved).

Results

When discussing our findings, we speculate that there may be several stages of memory retrieval that might be differently influenced by intention and monitoring.

Conclusions

We discuss the novel hypothesis that there may be two different types of monitoring that operate independently of each other, before and after retrieval, respectively.

Keywords

involuntary/voluntary memories retrieval mode autobiographical memory monitoring processes intention personal past

Introduction

Autobiographical memory relates to our personal past, influences our emotions and creates a sense of continuity over time (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). We typically use this type of memory intentionally when trying to recall if we have locked the door or the last time we went on holiday to Paris. Nonetheless, memories may also pop into our mind unintended, for example, when the taste of a certain cake at a café reminds us of our bygone birthday party. Memories of this type (involuntary memories) are not preceded by any conscious attempt at retrieval and are usually unexpected (Berntsen, 1996, 2010). This also implies that such memories are retrieved without any cognitive effort. Voluntary memories, on the other hand, are the result of intentional retrieval. While intentional retrieval is generally perceived as effortful and strategic (e.g. Botzung et al., 2008; Conway, 1990, 2005), voluntary memories can also be retrieved automatically and effortlessly (Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016; Uzer & Brown, 2017; Uzer et al., 2012).

Intention and Autobiographical Memory Characteristics

Previous studies have shown that voluntary and involuntary memories differ in a number of phenomenological characteristics (Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018). For example, it has consistently been found that involuntary memories tend to describe a specific event (e.g. a girl on the bus looked at me and smiled), whereas voluntary memories more often depict a general and thus less specific events (e.g. commuting to the university by bus; Berntsen, 1998; Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010; Mace, 2006; Schlagman et al., 2009).¹ Secondly, involuntary memories tend to have a greater impact on our current mood than voluntary memories (Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010; Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Rubin et al., 2011). Involuntary memories have also been found to be more pleasant and positive (e.g. Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010). Furthermore, recent studies from our lab showed that involuntary memories were rated by participants as more clear, unusual, personally relevant, important and also more recent and more frequently rehearsed in the past (e.g. Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019). According to Rubin et al. (2011), memories that are emotionally strong and well-rehearsed should be more accessible. In general, as suggested by Berntsen (2009), highly accessible memories seem to be more likely to be retrieved involuntarily.

To account for the differences between voluntary and involuntary memories, we recently proposed the threshold hypothesis (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018). According to this idea, a memory has to pass an awareness threshold to be reported by an individual, and any memory below the threshold will not enter one’s awareness. In this model, a memory’s accessibility is defined as the ease with which it passes the awareness threshold (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2018). The accessibility of a memory may be increased by certain characteristics, such as its personal importance, recency, vividness, emotional intensity and rehearsal (Ritchie et al., 2006). The threshold may also be modified (e.g. lowered) by cognitive factors such as intention (i.e. wanting to retrieve a memory).

According to the threshold hypothesis, highly accessible memories pass the threshold easily and are therefore much more likely to enter consciousness involuntarily (i.e. in the absence of intention or effort). Memories that are less accessible, on the other hand, rarely enter consciousness unless “something” lowers the awareness threshold for them. Recent studies have consistently provided empirical support for this prediction and indicated intention and cognitive effort to be central candidates for this “something” (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019).

Monitoring and Characteristics of Autobiographical Memories

Barzykowski and Staugaard (2016, 2018) suggested that – in addition to intention and cognitive effort – there is another process that may change the awareness threshold level. They proposed this process to be selective monitoring (i.e. expecting a memory to appear in our mind and waiting for it to happen). For example, manipulating the instructions for participants to either report only memories or to report all mental contents has shown that the former appears to lower the awareness threshold (Batool & Mazzoni, 2011; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2018; Vannucci et al., 2014). According to the threshold hypothesis, this occurs because instructing participants to report only memories leads them to actively monitor their stream of consciousness for mental contents that meet this criterion. Monitoring thereby lowers the awareness threshold and increases the number of low-accessibility memories that reach consciousness. This means that monitoring should theoretically make involuntary memories more similar to voluntary memories in terms of their characteristics.

Indeed, this has been found in several previous studies. For example, Barzykowski and Niedźwieńska (2016) found that involuntary memories retrieved in a selective monitoring condition were less clear, less detailed, less vivid and elicited less intense physical reactions compared with memories retrieved without selective monitoring. In another study, selective monitoring decreased the personal importance and emotional intensity of memories (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2018). As we show below, characteristics such as emotional intensity, importance and vividness may be treated as indicators of accessibility.

A different take is presented by Hintzman (2011) and Vannucci et al. (2014), who suggest that monitoring increases the awareness threshold instead of lowering it. For instance, instructing participants to report only autobiographical memories may add another decision stage to the retrieval process since the mental content has to fit participants’ understanding of what types of autobiographical memory should be reported. Hintzman (2011) argues that selective monitoring creates “a bottleneck” that makes it impossible for the majority of involuntary memories to be reported. This prediction was supported by research showing that participants in a monitoring condition reported memories that were more rehearsed, specific, vivid and detailed (Vannucci et al., 2014).

The Present Study: Beyond the Subjective Perspective

The differences observed between voluntary and involuntary memories, as well as between memories retrieved with and without monitoring, are exclusively based on participants’ subjective ratings of memory characteristics. In the present study, we wanted to investigate the validity of these ratings through a qualitative analysis of the memory descriptions by independent and blind judges. Such an analysis can be considered analogous to construct validity in psychometrics, as it tests whether predictions from the threshold hypothesis are supported by the characteristics of memories and not just by the participants’ subjective ratings. Although the idea of studying the content of memories is certainly not new (Uzer et al., 2012; Barzykowski, Riess et al., 2019; Mace et al., 2020), autobiographical memory studies that look exclusively at the content of memory reports are relatively less common (see also the possible limitations section for further discussion).

The overall goal of the present study was to address an important theoretical question: how do intention and selective monitoring influence autobiographical memory? While previous research has examined this question only on the basis of subjective ratings of participants’ memory characteristics, we wanted to extend and validate these findings through a careful mixed-method analysis of memory descriptions (i.e. we combined qualitative with quantitative analyses as described below).

To this end, we conducted a qualitative content analysis on a large pool of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories obtained in the laboratory and originally reported by Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, and Mazzoni (2019). In brief, voluntary autobiographical memories were obtained using the word-cue method (Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974) in which an individual is presented with verbal cues and asked to recall a personal memory in response to each cue. Involuntary memories were collected using modified versions of Schlagman and Kvavilashvili’s (2008) experimental design, which allows experimental control of the retrieval phase. More precisely, while participants were engaged in an undemanding vigilance task, they also viewed short verbal phrases, some of which might have incidentally triggered involuntary memories. While performing the monotonous vigilance task, participants were instructed to report involuntary autobiographical memories that spontaneously came to mind. Selective monitoring was manipulated by instructing participants to either report only autobiographical memories (selective monitoring: the standard instruction in most prior studies), or to report all thoughts that entered their mind (no selective monitoring).

Finally, independent judges, blind to experimental conditions, analysed all observed memories and decided whether they belonged to predetermined categories (see Table 1). We understood these categories as indicators of memory accessibility. More specifically, previous studies consistently show that specificity is associated with better accessibility (Berntsen, 1998; Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010; Mace, 2006; Schlagman et al., 2009), and thus memories were rated on the dimension of typicality versus specificity/uniqueness. Secondly, previous studies repeatedly showed that involuntary memories are generally more positive than negative (Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010; Rubin et al., 2011), and thus the second category focused on positive/negative valence rating (consequently, we did not analyse neutral ratings). The rationale behind the third category; namely, the emotional intensity, was that according to Rubin et al. (2011), memories that are emotionally strong should be highly accessible. The fourth category refers to self-orientation, as information linked to the self rather than to others is usually better remembered. This is also in accordance with the threshold hypothesis, which predicts that autobiographical memories focused on the self should be remembered more easily and thus be more accessible (Dewhurst et al., 2017). Finally, memories were also categorized as adaptive if their content was social/relational, because socially important events, or any significant person in an episode, make that episode itself more distinctive, and thus more accessible (Hunt, 2006; Toyota, 2012). The five categories above refer to the event described in the memory. The four categories below instead do not refer to the event, but to the memory description. Firstly, judges rated any reference to (1) physical reaction, (2) emotion and (3) to sensory information. Moreover, they rated the perceived emotional impact of retrieving this particular memory. Along with the previous five categories, these four dimensions can be important indicators of memory accessibility.

Table 1.

Dimensions of used categories as a function of the type of memory or elements included into the memory descriptions as categorised/rated by the independent judges.

Dimensions pertaining to the event described in the memory	Dimensions pertaining to the memory descriptions (i.e. what details are included into the memory description)
1. Typicality/Uniqueness	1. Physical reaction reference
2. Emotional valence (positive/negative)	2. Emotion reference
3. Perceived emotional intensity (rated on 7-point scale)	3. Sensory reference
	auditory
	visual
	tactile
	scent
	taste
4. Focus on self versus Others	4. Perceived emotional impact (rated on 7-point scale)
5. Social/relational oriented memories

As argued above, we understood these categories as accessibility indicators. In accordance with the threshold hypothesis, we predict that involuntarily retrieved memories are more accessible than voluntarily retrieved ones. Thus, we predicted that the nine categories will more often pertain to the involuntary memories than voluntary ones. In other words, we predicted that involuntary memories would more often be classified as such (e.g. unique, having emotional reference) than voluntary memories (which in turn would more often than involuntary ones be classified as typical or having no reference to emotion). Also, involuntary memories would be judged higher on continuous scales (e.g. as having a higher emotional impact).

Secondly, we expected that selective monitoring conditions (‘report only memories’) would elicit less accessible memories than a no selective monitoring condition (‘report any mental content’). We based our prediction on the threshold hypothesis: lowering the awareness threshold enables the retrieval of low-accessible memories. Finally, theoretically, we expected intention and monitoring to show cumulative effects in lowering the awareness threshold. Therefore, the voluntary memory condition with selective monitoring should include the largest number of memories with low accessibility, while the involuntary memory condition without selective monitoring should include the smallest number of poorly accessible memories. We expected involuntary memories with monitoring and voluntary memories without monitoring to lie somewhere between the two extremes (see also Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2018).

Method

The local Research Ethics Committee at the Institute of Psychology of the Jagiellonian University approved this study (no. KE/03/012018). Written consent for participation was obtained prior to data collection.

Design

The study employed a 2 (intention: involuntary memories vs. voluntary memories) × 2 (monitoring: selective monitoring vs. lack of selective monitoring) between-subject experimental design, as in the original study (Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni 2019). More precisely, since the study addressed the question of how conscious intention (i.e. wanting to retrieve a memory) and selective monitoring (i.e. waiting for a memory to appear) influence autobiographical memory retrieval, the study design directly answers this goal. Specifically, as these two dimensions are believed to influence the memory retrieval independently from each other, the study groups were planned to reflect all possible combinations of these dimensions that, importantly, were kept separate from each other. There were then four groups combining conscious intention (involuntary and voluntary conditions representing the lack and the presence of retrieval intentionality, respectively), and selective monitoring (conditions with reporting specifically autobiographical memory or reporting any type of mental content – representing the first the presence and the second the lack of selective monitoring, respectively). As a result, the design allowed us to examine the way these selected factors may work in concert during autobiographical memory retrieval.

This design allowed us to compare the proportion of memories per category (e.g. memories with an emotion reference or a sensory reference per each participant) and memory properties (e.g. retrieval latencies, length of memory descriptions, perceived emotional intensity per each participant; see Table 2). Finally, when comparing memories, the proportion of typical versus unique, positive versus negative, and self-oriented versus other-oriented memories were treated as within-subjects factors since they describe the opposite extremes of the same dimensions (see Table 3).

Table 2.

Overall mean for memories as a function of retrieval intention and monitoring (between-subject design).

	Voluntary memories: Voluntary autobiographical memory task				Involuntary memories: Vigilance task				The effect of intention: Voluntary versus Involuntary			The effect of monitoring: Monitoring versus Lack of selective monitoring			The intention by monitoring interaction
	Selective monitoring: Monitoring only for memories		Lack of selective monitoring: Monitoring for any thoughts		Selective monitoring: Monitoring only for memories		Lack of selective monitoring: Monitoring for any thoughts		The effect of intention: Voluntary versus Involuntary						The intention by monitoring interaction
	Retrieve memory		Retrieve any thought		Report a memory		Report any thought		Test (Two-way ANOVA)
	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	F (1, 125)	p	η ²	F (1, 125)	p	η ²	F (1, 125)	p	η ²
Number of memories	26.26	4.12	13.32	4.74	11.70	7.55	5.03	3.83	149.84*	.001	.55	110.23*	.001	.47	11.03*	.001	.08
Length of memory content description	115.50	61.21	78.07	40.10	106.43	54.68	79.44	43.88	.18	.673	.01	12.60*	.001	.09	.33	.566	.01
Proportions of memories (as rated by the judges)
Emotion reference	.23	.18	.16	.12	.22	.23	.21	.26	.45	.504	.01	1.17	.281	.01	.78	.377	.01
Physical reference	.08	.06	.08	.10	.05	.08	.05	.09	3.92*	.050	.03	.01	.928	.01	.01	.962	.01
Any sensory reference	.24	.11	.24	.18	.20	.20	.14	.18	5.61*	.019	.02	.56	.456	.01	.96	.329	.01
Auditory reference	.06	.05	.06	.09	.06	.09	.05	.12	.05	.822	.01	.42	.520	.01	.13	.716	.01
Visual reference	.01	.02	.01	.03	.03	.07	.04	.08	7.13*	.009	.05	.02	.888	.001	.11	.740	=.01
Tactile reference	.09	.05	.10	.09	.06	.09	.05	.11	7.03*	.009	05	.20	.888	.01	.90	.347	=.01
Scent reference	.04	.03	.05	.07	.01	.03	.01	.05	16.64*	.001	.12	.03	.859	.01	.01	.923	.01
Taste reference	.02	.03	.02	.04	.02	.06	0	0	1.05	.308	.01	2.37	.126	.01	2.74	.100	.02
Social/relational oriented memories	.32	.11	.29	.16	.47	.24	.40	.31	12.11*	.001	.09	1.58	.211	.01	.14	.706	.01
Rated (1–7) perceived emotional intensity	4.02	.47	3.90	.63	4.48	.75	3.80	1.20	1.67	.198	.01	8.18*	.005	.06	3.88*	.051	.03
Rated (1–7) perceived emotional impact	3.43	.36	3.24	.37	3.90	.61	3.42	1.03	8.42*	.004	.06	8.85*	.004	.07	1.62	.206	. 01

Notes: Each proportion is the proportion of a particular type of memory in all memories reported by the individual. Significant results are marked with an asterisk (*) Tests are statistically significant at the corrected q = .014 level. The differences marked with “*” (i.e. the physical and sensory reference, interaction for perceived emotional intensity) are close to corrected statistical significance.

Table 3.

Overall mean proportions of memories (as rated by judges) as a function of retrieval intention and monitoring (mixed-factor design).

	Voluntary memories: Voluntary autobiographical memory task				Involuntary memories: Vigilance task				The effect of memory category (Type 1 vs. Type 2)			The memory category by intention interaction			The memory category by monitoring interaction			The memory category by intention and monitoring interaction
	Selective monitoring: Monitoring only for memories		Lack of selective monitoring: Monitoring for any thoughts		Selective monitoring: Monitoring only for memories		Lack of selective monitoring: Monitoring for any thoughts		The effect of memory category (Type 1 vs. Type 2)			The memory category by intention interaction			The memory category by monitoring interaction			The memory category by intention and monitoring interaction
	Retrieve memory		Retrieve any thought		Report a memory		Report any thought		Test (Mixed two-way ANOVA)
	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	F (1, 125)	p	η2	F (1, 125)	p	η2	F (1, 125)	p	η2	F (1, 125)	p	η2
Typical memories	.55	.19	.59	.19	.40	.23	.51	.31	7.15*	.009	.05	6.33*	.013	.05	11.02*	.001	.08	1.94	.166	.02
Unique memories	.43	.19	.32	.18	.57	.24	.33	.27
Positive memories	.38	.08	.33	.19	.51	.22	.39	.26	13.34*	.001	.10	22.73*	.001	.15	.57	.453	.01	.11	.746	.01
Negative memories	.38	.12	.39	.19	.27	.16	.17	.21
Self-oriented memories	.52	.17	.39	.18	.68	.24	.50	.35	88.06*	.001	.41	16.34*	.001	.12	19.80*	.001	.14	.25	.619	.01
Other-oriented memories	.24	.11	.35	.14	.12	.10	.24	.26

Participants

As described above, the data for the present study was extracted and re-analysed from an involuntary plus voluntary autobiographical memory study by Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, and Mazzoni (2019). A total of 129 undergraduate students (M_age = 23.59, SD = 3.29, range 19–34 years) participated in the study in return for a gift card worth 20 PLN (ca. $ 5). They were recruited using solicitation materials, such as, flyers, posters, web-based advertisements. They were randomly assigned to one of the following experimental groups: (1) report any thought – vigilance task (involuntary retrieval without selective monitoring; 30 participants, M_age = 23.44, SD = 3.32, range 20–32 years); (2) report only involuntary memories – vigilance task (involuntary retrieval with selective monitoring; 33 participants, M_age = 22.67, SD = 2.09, range 20–27 years); (3) recall each thought related to each cue (voluntary retrieval without selective monitoring; 31 participants, M_age = 23.48, SD = 3.36, range 19–34 years); (4) recall each memory related to each cue (voluntary retrieval with selective monitoring; 35 participants, M_age = 24.67, SD = 3.91, range 19–34 years).²

Materials

The Involuntary Memory Program

The Involuntary Memory Program (IMP) successfully used in previous studies on autobiographical memory retrieval (e.g. Barzykowski, Hajdas et al., 2021; Barzykowski & Mazzoni, 2021; Barzykowski & Niedźwieńska, 2016, 2018a, 2018b; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016; 2018; Barzykowski, Staugaard, & Mazzoni, 2021; Barzykowski, Radel et al., 2019) is a fully computerized memory task based on Schlagman and Kvavilashvili’s original method (2008; used also by Cole et al., 2016; Mazzoni et al., 2014; Vannucci et al., 2014, 2019). It was developed to study involuntary autobiographical memories under well-controlled experimental settings. Briefly, in the involuntary conditions, participants perform a vigilance task that requires a key to be pressed each time the vertical line slides are presented on the screen. Since there are only 15 target slides in a stream of 785 horizontal line slides (each slide is displayed for 2 s), the task may seem to be monotonous. In addition to the lines, short verbal phrases (e.g. receiving a letter, preparing dinner) are presented in the centre of each slide. In total there, were 800 verbal phrases that were divided into neutral (N = 267; buying bread), positive (N = 267; e.g. receiving a present) and negative (N = 266; e.g. lost a wallet) phrases.³ They serve as potential triggers for involuntary memories (selective monitoring condition) or involuntary thoughts (no selective monitoring condition). From this pool, we randomly selected 30-word phrases (10 positive, 10 negative and 10 neutral) that were used as cues in the voluntary conditions. Importantly, as described in Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, and Mazzoni (2019) cues used in the involuntary and voluntary conditions were comparable in terms of concreteness, imagery and typicality.

Procedure

Participants were tested in groups and were free to withdraw from the study at any time. The selective monitoring groups were instructed to report only autobiographical memories, while the groups without selective monitoring were instructed to report any mental content regardless of how interesting they found them to be. All groups were equally instructed to write down details of every memory (in the selective monitoring group) or of all mental contents (in the lack of selective monitoring group).

Involuntary Conditions

The Condition without Selective Monitoring

Participants were informed that since the vigilance task might be boring, they might experience different kinds of thoughts during the task. We provided them with examples of mental content, including words, current concerns, wishes, plans, future-oriented thoughts, memories, personal goals, but we did not emphasize any particular type of thought. In addition, we emphasized that mental content can be diverse (general or specific). All participants were instructed to write down any involuntary thoughts that occurred during the 800 vigilance trials by pressing the spacebar as soon as they became aware of them. After pressing the spacebar, they briefly described the content of their thoughts and rated it on several scales which were not relevant to the goal of the present study (for details see Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019). This first rating will be referred to as the online procedure. Once a thought had been reported and described, participants clicked ‘continue’ to return to the vigilance task.

At the completion of the main vigilance task, participants were provided with verbal and written explanations of the nature of autobiographical memories (see also Schlagman et al., 2009, p. 410) they were also informed about the post-task rating procedure, in which they would be asked to review all thoughts recorded in the previous part (i.e. during the online procedure) and decide which were autobiographical memories. They were then asked to describe each memory more thoroughly by typing it and rating it on several scales which were not relevant to the goal of the present study (for details see Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019).

The Condition with Selective Monitoring

The only difference between the selective monitoring condition and the condition without selective monitoring was that participants were instructed to report only memories, that spontaneously came to mind during the vigilance task.

Voluntary Conditions

Participants⁴ in both voluntary conditions were provided with 30 cues and with the same online and post-task rating procedure as in the involuntary condition. However, unlike the involuntary conditions, participants were not instructed to perform the vigilance task, and the retrieval was voluntary since the task was retrieval-oriented.

The Condition without Selective Monitoring

Participants were instructed to produce free associations as quickly as possible to each of the 30 verbal phrases displayed on the screen, without omissions. Importantly, they were provided with examples of associations such as words, current concerns, wishes, plans, future-oriented thoughts, memories, personal goals, but we did not emphasize any particular type of content. It was explained that mental content can be diverse (specific or general). We also pointed out that they should record any associations to each of the cue phrases presented, regardless of how interesting they might be and what their specific content was. After completing all 30 trials, the post-task rating procedure began.

The Condition with Selective Monitoring

The only difference between the selective monitoring condition and the condition without selective monitoring was that participants were instructed to recall an autobiographical memory in response to each of the 30 verbal phrases displayed on the screen.

Strategy for Analysing Data

A total of 1960 autobiographical memories reported by participants in the four experimental conditions (i.e. involuntary or voluntary memory condition with or without selective monitoring) were coded by two independent judges into the following seven main qualitative categories: (1) typical (e.g. annual Christmas at my family home) or unique (e.g. the first time I met my ex-boyfriend); (2) self-oriented (e.g. I failed the exam because I was not well prepared) or other-oriented (e.g. my mother was very surprised and very pleased by the birthday present she got from us); (3) positive (e.g. I visited my Grandmother for lunch) or negative (e.g. I failed my exam); (4) social/relational oriented (i.e. referring to significant relationships or relational situations, e.g., my engagement); (5) referring to any emotions (e.g. I felt so happy); (6) referring to one or more of the following sensory components – vision (e.g. I saw beautiful fireflies in the forest), hearing (e.g. singing a song while sitting near a campfire), feeling (e.g. feeling tooth pain), scent (e.g. bad smell of my hedgehog), taste (e.g. eating a sweet and delicious mango); (7) referring to any physical/physiological sensations (e.g. my loud stomach rumble during the exam); In line with the literature on autobiographical memory (e.g., Williams, 1996), memories were coded as specific, one-off memories of events that happened at a particular place and time (e.g. the first time I met my ex-boyfriend)) or general memories that relate to repetitive events or events that lasted over an extended time period (e.g. meeting my boyfriend after classes). Memories that focused specifically on the participant’s own actions and plans, or those that included the participant’s own emotions, reflections or outlook on the event were coded as self-oriented (e.g. last year I spent a semester in Norway, where I did some sightseeing and met many interesting people), while memories focused on other objects or other people’s characteristics, plans, actions and mental states were coded as other-oriented (e.g. a friend from primary school who teased others and had learning difficulties). Finally, memories were coded as social/relational oriented if they focused on creating/engaging in relationships with others (e.g. First date with a boy, or I often went sledging with my father and brother on a nearby hill); social events (e.g. My first rock concert, or My friend’s birthday party yesterday); social affiliation/rejection-related memories (e.g. The group that used to surround me); the participant in the context of other people (e.g. I've been brushing my teeth a lot lately because I think I have a bad breath); important figures and places with which a participant has bonds (e.g. My mom, or Dinner at the family home); and life periods when engaging in relationships is very important to an individual (e.g. Primary school times). Memories which did not contain the above-mentioned elements were coded as not socially/relationally oriented. We provide the exact definition of each category with appropriate examples in supplemental appendix A. Importantly, all disagreements between the two judges about the categorization were resolved by the discussion. More precisely, the disagreements were thoroughly discussed by the two judges and the third super-like-judge who was involved in the discussion and the process of resolving the disagreements to find the final agreed category (see also supplemental appendix A). However, if the agreement was not found and/or there were severe doubts on the final category identification, the memory was deemed as undecidable and fell into the third category ‘other’. This way, there was no pressure to categorize each memory into the category of interest and allowed on some occasions for a disagreement between judges to remain unsolved. Therefore, we feel confident that all the data were reliably evaluated and categorized.

Independent judges rated also all autobiographical memories on a 7-point scale⁵: (a) intensity of emotions they think were experienced by the participant in response to the given content (henceforth called perceived emotional intensity); (b) to what extent the given content might have influenced the participant’s mood/level of activation or arousal (henceforth, called perceived emotional impact).

Finally, to control for multiple comparisons, we chose the False Discovery Rate correction (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995).

Results

On average across all categories, entries identified by independent judges as ‘hard to say’ or ‘other’ accounted for 9.62% of all memories recorded by participants. The inter-rater reliability was good with a Cohen’s Kappa coefficient ranging from .32 (for self-other distinction) to .58 (for emotional valence and sensory component distinction). Since Landis and Koch (1977) considered a Cohen’s Kappa of .21–.40 to be ‘fair’ and .41–.60 to be ‘moderate agreement’, it can be argued that the lowest Cohen’s Kappa observed in our study (i.e. .32) was fair and acceptable.

In summary, the dependent variables were a) the proportion of memories categorized within each of the previously described seven main qualitative categories (e.g. self-oriented memories, emotional reference) out of the total number of memories reported by a given participant;⁶ b) and the characteristics of memories as rated by the judges on a 7-point scale (e.g. perceived emotional intensity), see Table 2 and Table 3. As for perceived memory characteristics (e.g. perceived emotional intensity), we calculated the means for the two judges for each memory separately; subsequently, similarly to previous autobiographical memory studies (e.g. Barzykowski & Niedźwieńska, 2016; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016; 2018; Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008), we calculated mean ratings for memories reported by each participant because they constituted dependent multiple observations (i.e. memories). Finally, we also evaluated the total length of memory descriptions by summarizing the total number of characters provided by participants during the online and post-task rating procedure. For all statistical tests reported below, the alpha was .05. Eta squared was calculated as the measure of effect size for each ANOVA. The overall mean ratings of all the dependent variables are reported in Tables 1 and 2.

Number of Autobiographical Memories

In total there were 1960 autobiographical memories. Of these, 386 memories were reported in the involuntary condition with selective monitoring (M = 11.70, SD = 7.55, range 1–27); 173 memories were reported in the involuntary condition without selective monitoring (M = 5.03, SD = 3.83, range 1–16); 919 memories were reported in the voluntary condition with selective monitoring (M = 26.26, SD = 4.12, range 14–30); 482 memories were reported in the voluntary condition without selective monitoring (M = 13.32, SD = 4.74, range 6–25).⁷

Memory Content

The mean proportion for each category for involuntary and voluntary memories, as well as the outcome of all ANOVAs can be seen in Tables 1 and 2. More precisely, Table 1 shows factorial ANOVAs on memory proportion for each memory category (e.g. emotion-oriented memories), length of memory description, and phenomenological characteristics as rated by judges (e.g. perceived emotional intensity) as dependent variables, and intention (involuntary vs. voluntary) and monitoring (selective monitoring vs. lack of selective monitoring) as between-subjects factors. Table 2 shows mixed ANOVAs with two intention categories (involuntary vs. voluntary) x two monitoring categories (selective monitoring vs. lack of selective monitoring) x two memory categories (typical vs. unique memory proportion), with repeated measures on the last factor. Then, we repeated the above-mentioned analysis for positive versus negative memory proportion and self-oriented versus other-oriented memory proportion.⁸

First, we present how involuntary and voluntary memories differed from each other (i.e. main effects of intention), and then we present how monitoring influenced memory retrieval (the effects of selective monitoring). Finally, we present the interaction between these two dimensions.

The Effects of Intention

As can be seen in Table 2, compared to voluntary memories, involuntary memories were categorized as more related to vision and were more social/relational oriented. At the same time, compared to involuntary memories, voluntary memories were more related to feelings, smells. We did not observe any main effects of intention for length of memory description, emotion references, auditory references, taste references, or emotional intensity.

Finally, when looking at the characteristics of memories as rated by the judges on a 7-point scale, involuntary memories compared to voluntary memories were rated as having higher emotional impact (although the difference in terms of perceived emotional intensity was numerically in the same direction, it did not reach statistical significance).

The Effects of Selective Monitoring

There was a significant effect of selective monitoring on length of memory description, emotional intensity and emotional impact. As can be seen in Tables 1 and 2, memories retrieved with selective monitoring had longer descriptions, and were rated by the judges on a 7-point scale as having greater emotional intensity and higher emotional impact on participants.

The Interaction between Intention and Selective Monitoring

Table 2 shows a significant interaction between the memory category and intention for typical versus unique memories, positive versus negative memories and self-oriented versus other-oriented memories. Post hoc tests showed that while there were similar typical and unique memory proportions in involuntary memories, higher typical than unique memory proportions were observed in voluntary memories. In addition, we observed similar positive versus negative memory proportions in the voluntary memory conditions, while there were more positive than negative memories in involuntary conditions. While there were more self-oriented than other-oriented memories in the voluntary and involuntary conditions, this difference was more robust in the involuntary conditions (Cohen’s d = .50 and .79 for voluntary and involuntary conditions, respectively). Importantly, in the involuntary conditions there were the highest proportions of self-oriented memories and the lowest proportions of the other-oriented memories. Finally, there was also a significant interaction between the memory category and selective monitoring for typical versus unique memories and self-oriented versus other-oriented memories. More precisely, post hoc tests showed that while there were no differences between typical and unique memory proportions in the monitoring conditions, there were more typical and less unique memories in the conditions without monitoring, in which we also observed the lowest proportion of unique memories. As for the self-oriented and other-oriented memories, selective monitoring increased the proportion of self-oriented and decreased the proportion of other-oriented memories, thus leading to the highest proportion of self-oriented and the lowest proportion of other-oriented memories across all other conditions.

Additional Findings

The Effect of Memory Category

As can be seen in Table 2, we observed a significant main effect for memory type; this shows that, in general, there were higher proportions of typical, positive and self-oriented memories compared to unique, negative and other-oriented memories, respectively.

Discussion

We investigated the effects of intention and selective monitoring on autobiographical memory content and memory descriptions. We expected intention and selective monitoring to increase retrieval of memories with poor accessibility. We also expected that these poorly accessible memories would be detectable to an independent observer examining subjective memory descriptions (e.g. containing less sensory details, having less references to emotions, etc.). We found that both intention and selective monitoring influenced memory contents and descriptions to some extent. We discuss these findings in detail below.

Effects of Intention

When looking at the involuntary and voluntary memory descriptions and memory contents, involuntary memories were more social/relational-oriented and visual compared with voluntary memories. In addition, they were also rated by judges as having higher emotional impact. At the same time, when describing voluntary memories, participants more often referred to scents (e.g. remembering a bad, annoying smell from the kitchen) and sense of touch (e.g. remembering tooth pain). Involuntary and voluntary memories did not differ in the length of their content descriptions.

In general, these findings show that involuntary and voluntary memories are differently described and may relate to different types of events. Descriptions of involuntary memories were rated by independent judges as having greater emotional impact. This directly replicates previous findings that showed that involuntary memories may indeed have more impact on current mood compared with voluntary memories (Cole et al., 2016; Johannessen & Berntsen, 2010; Rubin et al., 2011). Involuntary memories were also more social/relational (e.g. referring to significant relationships or relational situations) and had more visual references. While social/relational-oriented memories relate to important, relationship-oriented events, which should also be highly accessible, vision may be considered ‘the most complex, highly developed, and important sense for humans’ (for more nuanced discussion see Kandel et al., 2000; Hutmacher, 2019). These findings therefore support the central tenet of the threshold model that involuntary memories on average are more accessible than voluntary memories.

While we would expect involuntary memories to be perceptually concrete, and voluntary memories be less dependent on perceptual processes, we actually observed more smell components and tactile-related components in voluntary memories (also physical/physiological sensations and sensory components as these differences were approaching statistical significance). One possible explanation is that highly emotional and intense memories may be described in a brief and parsimonious manner due to experiential avoidance, whereas less intense and vivid memories may be more thoroughly described since elaborating on them is less threatening. Another, but not mutually exclusive, possibility is that descriptions of voluntary memories may be longer simply because more information is available, given how voluntary retrieval involves a search process driven in some part by knowledge about life periods and other autobiographical information (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). This idea could be addressed in future studies by using different types of cues (e.g. memories that are rated high/low on a perceptual scale) in both involuntary and voluntary memories. For instance, one would expect that broadly understood adaptive or visual-oriented cues might be more efficient in triggering involuntary than voluntary memories, while more elaborated cues (e.g. feeling, physical oriented) might be more efficient in voluntary retrieval. While there are already studies showing, for example, that verbal cues may be more efficient in triggering past-oriented mind wandering (e.g. Mazzoni et al., 2014, and that direct retrieval is more common when cues are personalized; for example, Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019; Uzer & Brown, 2017), more studies are still needed.

Effects of Selective Monitoring

We manipulated the selective monitoring by instructing participants to report only memories compared to conditions without selective monitoring in which participants were asked to report any type of mental content. We expected lack of selective monitoring to increase the likelihood that poorly accessible memories were retrieved. First – and surprisingly inconsistent with previous studies (e.g. Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2018; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019), but in agreement with Vannucci et al., 2014, selective monitoring resulted in memory descriptions that were rated by independent judges as emotionally intense and emotionally impactful. In addition, these memories also had longer descriptions.

As demonstrated by previous studies (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019), when participants were instructed to monitor their thoughts and report only memories, they reported, on average, less accessible and less phenomenologically intense memories (as judged by their self-reports). In the present study, when participants were instructed to monitor their thoughts and report only memories, they also provided more elaborated (i.e. with longer descriptions) memories than when asked to report any mental content.

Interplay between Intention, Selective Monitoring and Memory Type

Table 3 shows several significant interactions between memory type (i.e. typical vs. unique, positive vs. negative, self-oriented vs. other-oriented) and either intention or selective monitoring. First, the interaction between intention and memory type showed that while people recall similar proportions of positive versus negative memories in the voluntary conditions, and typical versus unique memories in the involuntary conditions, there were more positive than negative memories in the involuntary conditions and more typical than unique memories in the voluntary conditions. In addition, while there were more self-than other-oriented memories in both involuntary and voluntary conditions, this difference was greater in the involuntary conditions, in which we observed the most self-oriented and the least other-oriented memories. These findings together support the central tenet of the threshold hypothesis, namely that intention lowers the awareness threshold and increases the number of low-accessibility memories (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019)

Finally, the interaction between memory type and selective monitoring showed that it was more likely for participants to report self-oriented memories in the selective monitoring conditions and typical memories in the conditions without selective monitoring. These findings were unexpected and do not follow the predictions of the threshold model. We therefore discuss them in more detail in the section on theoretical implications.

Additional Findings: The Effects of Memory Type

Looking at the memory types (positive vs. negative, typical vs. unique, self-oriented vs. other-oriented) suggests that typical, positive and self-oriented memories have the highest likelihood of being reported by participants, independently of conditions. These findings accord well with previous empirical studies and theories of autobiographical memory. For instance, according to the self-memory system model proposed by Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000, for latter modifications see Conway, 2008, 2009; Conway & Jobson, 2012) memories that are consistent with the self (e.g. current self-goals, etc.) may reach awareness more easily. Therefore, one would expect memories relating to the self to be favoured by retrieval compared to other-oriented memories. Interestingly, the latter type is reported more often in collective cultures (e.g. (Wang, 2004, 2008; Wang & Conway, 2004)), where more attention is placed on the group. Similar to previous studies on the reminiscence bump (e.g. Berntsen & Rubin, 2004), we observed a higher proportion of positive compared with negative memories. This may be a result of fading affect bias (e.g. Ritchie et al., 2006), indicating that negative (i.e. unpleasant) emotions associated with memories fade faster over time than positive emotions.

Finally, we observed longer memory descriptions for memories reported in the selective than the non-selective monitoring conditions, thus suggesting that selective monitoring leads to a more thorough elaboration.

Theoretical Implications

There are several important theoretical issues that emerge from our study. First, in most of the previous studies the difference between involuntary and voluntary memories was examined by looking at the phenomenological characteristics specifically rated by participants. This raises an interesting question about the extent to which phenomenological characteristics are based on objectively accessible memory properties. If we can reliably observe differences between involuntary and voluntary memories by looking at the memory descriptions, we minimize the influence of any beliefs that participants may have concerning the nature of involuntary and voluntary memories. Although recent existing findings suggest that metacognitive beliefs have limited influence on memory ratings (e.g. Barzykowski & Mazzoni, 2021), our findings clearly show that effects of intention and monitoring are directly observable in the memory descriptions.

As described above, the selective monitoring manipulation yielded some findings that were contradictory to our predictions stemming from the threshold model: memories retrieved in the monitoring condition were more self-oriented and less typical. We think it can be explained by the mechanisms suggested by Vannucci et al. (2014). According to Vannucci et al. (2014), instructing participants to report only autobiographical memories may result in selection biases during retrieval, leading people to report only memories that are congruent with what people think memories should be. Thus, with selective monitoring, a memory needs to meet additional criteria to be reported. Our findings clearly show that when instructed to report only memories, participants gave more thorough descriptions of their memories, and independent judges perceived them as more emotional and impactful. It may be speculated that instructions to focus only on memories add an additional expectation as to how these memories should be further described and elaborated. At the same time, we did not observe an effect of intention. This makes sense if we consider the effect of intention to be limited to retrieval per se, while monitoring influences the type of mental content that participants report.

Finally, it is possible that two different types of monitoring processes may influence autobiographical memory: pre-retrieval monitoring and post-retrieval monitoring (see also Barnes et al., 1999; Koriat, 1993; Koriat & Levy-Sadot, 2001; Schwartz & Metcalfe, 1992). The former, as described by Barzykowski and colleagues (Barzykowski & Niedźwieńska, 2016; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019; Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018), is a form of continuous, deliberate awareness of the flow of consciousness. Since this monitoring can be induced by instructing participants to report specific types of mental content, such as memories, and not report other types, this type of monitoring affects the retrieval process before and during memory retrieval. The latter, as recently proposed and explored by Matsumoto and colleagues (e.g. Matsumoto & Mochizuki, 2019; Matsumoto et al., 2020), relates more to the post-retrieval and retrieval outcome stages (also called meta-monitoring) after a memory has already been retrieved. As Matsumoto and colleagues argue, the lack of post-retrieval monitoring – especially when retrieval is very fast and effortless – contributes to autobiographical memories being overgeneral. We therefore consider these two distinct forms of monitoring, which operate at different times during retrieval and possibly at different levels of awareness. Pre-retrieval monitoring can be viewed as a continuous, goal-directed process that is concerned mostly with content and is probably not sensitive to accuracy. It may also require low cognitive effort and might be pre-conscious at least some of the time. Importantly, a pre-retrieval monitoring ‘check’ likely happens very quickly. On the other hand, post-retrieval monitoring can be viewed as a goal-activated process that is concerned mostly with accuracy, details and context. It probably requires high cognitive effort and is conscious most of the time. Post-retrieval monitoring ‘elaboration’ can take anywhere from seconds to minutes and most likely corresponds to ‘reminiscing’.

Finally, in the present study, independent judges categorized memories mainly on the basis of memory descriptions. Consider the following examples: (1) ‘Death’, (2) ‘My mother died four years ago, and I still miss her so much’. Independent judges might rate the second description higher on intensity because it contains much more emotional information; however, the first memory might actually be more intense to the participant.

Possible Limitations

When considering the results of the present study, some limitations and further experimental modifications may be taken into account. For instance, while we included only nine different types of categories to be used by independent judges, future studies would benefit by including other categories, such as turning points, schema-consistent versus schema-deviant events, and so on. All memories were cued by verbal cues, which could have an effect on memory retrieval. Thus, future studies could control for this possible limitation by manipulating different types of cues (e.g. pictorial, verbal, auditory, abstract vs. concrete etc.) across conditions. To further examine the possible effects of monitoring on the way memories are expressed and the possibility of having different types of monitoring, it could also be helpful to limit the length of memory descriptions across conditions in order to directly address the idea that participants describe memories. Next, while the inter-rater reliability in our study was good ranging from ‘fair’ to ‘moderate agreement’,⁹ and, importantly, all disagreements were resolved by the discussion, we feel confident that the categories were reliably evaluated. However, future studies could benefit from applying a slightly different category system addressing the memory complexity (e.g. including different types of categories related to, for example, effort involved in the memory retrieval or cues triggering the given memory etc.).

Finally, it may be argued that independent observations are generally superior to subjective observations¹⁰. However, studies that look exclusively at the content of memory reports are relatively rare (see for example Uzer et al., 2012; Barzykowski, Riess et al., 2019; Mace et al., 2020). This may result from the fact that some aspects of a memory (e.g. the phenomenological intensity and qualities of memory experience) can only be accessed by the rememberer (i.e. the one who retrieves a memory), and not a third party (i.e. experimenter/independent judges). For instance, when rating a memory in terms of ‘turning points’, on some occasions this may be obvious and straightforward (e.g. I remember seeing a boy crying on the playground but I did not know how to calm him down; back then I realised that I want to be psychotherapist as this would give me capability to help other people) but on other occasions this may be less clear (e.g. I remember seeing a boy crying on the playground but I did not know how to calm him down). Conversely, while certain descriptions may be judged in a certain way by a third party, they may not be perceived the same way by the rememberer.

We certainly cannot offer a final solution to this problem. Although direct observation of memory phenomenology is not possible, it is still possible to confront and compare the findings based on self-reports with findings based on other methods (e.g. third party judgements). Thus, applying and comparing the content analysis and self-reports may be often illuminating (Baumeister et al., 2007) and may significantly supplement our knowledge about certain aspects of memory retrieval (e.g. how these memories are communicated and expressed). In sum, content analysis has its shortcomings, but an approach that is more independent from the participant’s subjective perspective may provide another source of verification of the expected differences between involuntary and voluntary memories.

There is still a need for explicit and clear third person criteria for analysing such memory reports. In the present study, we made the first step in this direction. Yet, it is evident that this work awaits to be done in a more systematic and comprehensive study.

Final Conclusions

In the present study, we examined the role of intention (wanting to recall a given mental content) and selective monitoring (expecting a memory to be retrieved) in the descriptions of autobiographical memories. In particular, we wanted to verify, for the first time, if these effects of intention are objectively observable through the memory descriptions rated by judges blinded to retrieval conditions. Our main findings show that on average involuntary memories are indeed more accessible than voluntary memories and that intention lowers the awareness threshold and increases the number of low-accessibility memories (Barzykowski & Staugaard, 2016, 2018; Barzykowski, Niedźwieńska, & Mazzoni, 2019). Second, when discussing our findings, we speculate that there may be several stages of memory retrieval that may be differently influenced by intention and monitoring. In particular, we argue that there are differences between memory retrieval and memory elaboration. While the former relates to the mechanisms of becoming aware of a given memory, the latter is associated with processes that shape the way we reminisce about our personal past and share it with others. Finally, we further discussed the possibility that there are two different types of monitoring that operate independently of each other. As is clear from the present study and the foregoing discussion, our findings open up a set of interesting questions for future research.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-prx-10.1177_00332941211048736 - Supplemental material for Intention and Monitoring Influence the Content of Memory Reports

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-prx-10.1177_00332941211048736 for Intention and Monitoring Influence the Content of Memory Reports by Krystian Barzykowski, Ewa Skopicz-Radkiewicz, Radosław Kabut, Søren Risløv Staugaard and Giuliana Mazzoni in Psychological Reports

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank Marcin Draszczuk for IT preparation of the IMP. In addition, we thank Aleksandra Machniak and Justyna Konieczny for their help in collecting data.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The study was supported by a grant for young researchers sponsored by the Faculty of Philosophy of Jagiellonian University (no.: K/DSC/004091) for Krystian Barzykowski. The writing of the present paper was supported by a grant from the Polish National Science Centre (no. 2019/35/B/HS6/00528) and the Bekker programme from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (no. PPN/BEK/2019/1/00092/DEC/1) for Krystian Barzykowski.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (ethics approval number: KE/03/012018). Written consent for participation was obtained prior to data collection and after an explanation of the purpose and procedures of this study. All participants were informed that the data would be strictly confidential.

ORCID iD

Krystian Barzykowski

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Dr. Krystian Barzykowski is an autobiographical memory specialist in experimental cognitive psychology based at the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland). Over the years, he has become an expert on autobiographical memory research with special attention put on involuntary and voluntary memory retrieval.

Ewa Skopicz-Radkiewicz is a researcher in the Applied Memory Research Laboratory at the Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland). She does research on factors that regulate retrieval and could be potentially used to improve memory reports.

MA Radoslaw Kabut is a researcher at the Applied Memory Research Laboratory based at the Institute of Psychology at Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland). His main field of interest is functioning and methods of improvement of prospective memory in seniors.

Søren Risløv Staugaard Before switching careers, Dr. Søren R. Staugaard worked for a decade at the Center of Autobiographical Memory Research at Aarhus University, conducting experimental research on involuntary autobiographical memory in healthy and clinical populations.

Prof Giuliana Mazzoni is currently full professor in cognitive and forensic psychology University of Roma la Sapienza, Italy, and Emeritus in Neuroscience/Psychology at the university of Hull, UK. She is a known expert in human memory, including autobiographical involuntary and voluntary memory, exceptional memory, memory retrieval processes and metacognition.

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