Abstract
Involuntary autobiographical memories are mental representations of personally experienced past events that come to mind spontaneously, with no preceding attempt to recall them. They have been showed to be more frequent and more emotional in the psychosis continuum. Although schizophrenia is strongly associated with thought disorders, including cognitive intrusions of thought, images, semantic knowledge, research on patients' involuntary autobiographical memories is limited. We undertook two studies to compare involuntary and voluntary remembering in schizophrenia and the conditions in which involuntary memories occurs in those patients, both in daily life (n = 40), using a diary method, and in an experimental context (n = 50). Overall, results showed that the conditions of elicitation of involuntary memories differ in patients, as patients were more sensitive to memory triggers, especially internal triggers, in comparison to controls. Relatedly, patients' involuntary memories—mostly related to mundane events with low emotional load—were experienced more frequently. Although patients' involuntary and voluntary memories were less clear, more poorly contextualized and associated with a lower belief in occurrence than those of controls, patients considered them as more central to the self, in comparison to controls. The results are discussed in relation to patients' self-reflective impairments.
Highlights
Involuntary autobiographical memories are mental representations of personally experienced past events that come to mind unexpectedly, that is, with no preceding attempt to recall them [1, 2]
The aim of Study 1 was to examine involuntary autobiographical memories of patients with schizophrenia as they spontaneously occur in the course of everyday life
Who showed that patients with schizophrenia, just like control participants, were more likely to report experiencing mind-pops during fairly undemanding activities
Summary
Involuntary autobiographical memories are mental representations of personally experienced past events that come to mind unexpectedly, that is, with no preceding attempt to recall them [1, 2]. Involuntary autobiographical memories were more emotionally intense, had greater negative mood impact and were associated with negative content, such as past traumatic experiences, in individuals with attenuated psychotic symptoms compared to control participants. Study 1 had high ecological validity, but was time-consuming and cognitively-demanding for patients, whereas Study 2 enabled memory assessment in a controlled experimental setting, and in ways that were easier for the patients to accomplish Both studies examined a theoretically motivated selection of variables exploring the mechanisms of activation of involuntary autobiographical memories (including the attentional state preceding the memory, type of triggers and the participants’ sensitivity to triggers), as well as memory content and memory qualities (including emotion, mood impact, intrusiveness, feeling of control, belief in occurrence, and me-ness). We hypothesized that patients with schizophrenia would experience involuntary memories more frequently than control participants [18, 22, 25, 26]
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