ABSTRACT Collective memories are shared representations of a group’s past. For nations, these memories serve important purposes: they shape national identity, promote social cohesion and guide future decisions. Although extensive research has examined collective memory in Europe and the United States, less is known about countries outside these regions, such as Japan. Cultural tightness and other societal differences may influence the extent to which collective memories serve these functions. To address this issue, we first asked Japanese participants to nominate nationally important collective memories (Study 1), and then asked both Japanese and American participants to report the extent to which their country’s collective memories serve directive, social and identity functions (Study 2). Surprisingly, Japanese participants showed agreement on relatively few collective memories and rated those memories as serving these functions to a lesser degree than did Americans. These findings raise questions about how cultural tightness, institutional influences and educational systems shape collective memory and its functions. We suggest that in Japan, national identity may rely more on structural and cultural continuity than on shared recollections of specific historical events.

ABSTRACT Collaborative memory refers to a process where two or more members encode information individually but collaborate during retrieval. While the collaborative process itself is widely studied in retrieval research, communication strategies – specifically, how collaboration is strategically conducted – have received little attention. Through three experiments, this study investigates the influence of the “free collaboration”, “supporting others” and “focusing on differences” collaborative retrieval strategies and “nominal group” in four groups on collaborative memory and the collaborative retrieval effect across three types of memory materials: words, picture – names, and stories. Based on the results, the following conclusions can be drawn:(1) The influence of collaborative strategies on collaborative extraction exhibits a certain degree of task specificity. The difference-focused strategy demonstrated superior efficacy with verbal materials, whereas the partner-support strategy enhanced retrieval performance for narrative materials. (2) The influence of collaborative strategies on the collaborative memory effect also varies depending on the material. Distinct patterns of collaborative inhibition and error pruning emerged for verbal versus narrative materials in the two strategy groups. (3) For picture-name pairs – owing to their dual-coding characteristics – no performance differences emerged between strategy groups during collaborative retrieval, with both exhibiting collaborative advantages. In summary, the optimal collaboration approach varies according to material type, while collaboration strategies guide distinct interaction patterns. The differential alignment between these two dimensions – material-optimized approaches versus strategy-guided approaches – ultimately determines how collaboration strategies influence retrieval performance across materials.

ABSTRACT Active forgetting through retrieval suppression can impair memory for information encountered nearby in time (“amnesic shadow”). Whether this collateral effect extends to spatial memory is unclear. Across three experiments, we examined how suppression influences the encoding of new spatial memories. Experiment 1 used a modified hippocampal-modulation paradigm that paired the Think/No-Think task with a spatial location task. Spatial locations encoded between suppression trials were recalled less accurately than those encoded between retrieval trials or a baseline, evidencing an amnesic shadow for spatial memory. Experiment 2 introduced a 24-hour delay and showed that the deficit persisted, indicating durability beyond initial encoding. Experiment 3 manipulated control strategies: direct suppression produced the shadow, whereas thought substitution did not impair nearby spatial learning. Together, the results support systemic-suppression accounts in which prefrontal control transiently down-regulates hippocampal function, broadly weakening hippocampus-dependent processes. By extending the amnesic shadow to spatial memory and isolating it to direct suppression, this work provides a strategy-specific behavioural marker of memory control and clarifies how attempts to contain unwanted thoughts can unintentionally degrade concurrent spatial learning.

ABSTRACT Judgments of learning (JOLs) can improve memory for cue-target word pairs (i.e., JOL reactivity). Prior research suggests that this effect does not extend to text passage learning, especially when memory is assessed using short-answer tests (e.g., Ariel, R., Karpicke, J. D., Witherby, A. E., & Tauber, S. K. (2021). Do judgments of learning directly enhance learning of educational materials? Educational Psychology Review, 33(2), 693–712. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09556-8). However, JOL reactivity is often moderated by test format and JOL phrasing, and recent findings suggest that reactivity effects are greater when recognition tests are used. We tested whether global and term-specific JOLs would improve text passage learning when memory was assessed using short-answer (Experiment 1) and multiple-choice tests (Experiments 2 and 3). Across test formats, global JOLs were non-reactive. However, term-specific JOLs produced negative reactivity on short-answer tests (Experiment 1) but positive reactivity on multiple-choice tests (Experiments 2 and 3). This positive reactivity effect was greater in Experiment 3 when term-specific JOLs used a target-present phrasing. Importantly, this effect was also observed relative to a restudy group, suggesting that positive JOL reactivity was not solely driven by increased exposure to the target information. Taken together, JOLs can improve text passage learning, but their effectiveness is linked to test format and JOL phrasing.

ABSTRACT Like most natural disasters, pandemics are rarely memorialised by societies and poorly remembered by individuals. Using an online survey, we examined two samples (total N = 350) of US young adults’ support for commemorating COVID-19. Participants completed measures of identification with all humanity (IWAH), listed significant world events that happened since 1918 and events they anticipate happening by 2128, and indicated their support for investing public funds to commemorate COVID-19. IWAH was a significant predictor of support for commemorating COVID-19. Further, remembering natural disasters predicted anticipating future ones, which in turn predicted support for commemoration. However, the two predictors, IWAH and collective remembering-imagining system, were independent of each other. Findings confirm that people’s anticipations for the future are informed by their knowledge of the past and suggest that efforts to prepare for future disasters could benefit from focusing on history education and public commemorations.

ABSTRACT In sexual abuse cases, the witness statement plays a fundamental role. This brings about the complex task for judges to evaluate the statement on its credibility. In Study 1, we polled 79 Dutch legal professionals about the criteria they rely on to evaluate the credibility of a statement. Most criteria mentioned pertained to the content of the statement, specifically consistency (66%), accuracy (66%), and detailedness (53%). Twenty-eight percent mentioned all three criteria. The way the statement is presented was also mentioned (non-verbal behaviour: 14%, emotion; 13%; authentic impression: 11%). In Study 2, we analyzed 518 Dutch court rulings on sexual assault on the criteria used in credibility assessment. The most often used criteria were again consistency (80.1%), detailedness (65%), and accuracy (31%), with 13% relying on all three criteria. Authentic impression (23%), emotionality during the statement (13%), and signs of trauma (9.5%) were also regularly used. In conclusion, legal professionals rely heavily on content criteria (Consistency, Accuracy, and Detailedness) – but not in a systematic way. Highly contested criteria (i.e., emotion, trauma, nonverbal behaviour, authentic impression) are also regularly used. Judicial decision-making may benefit from relying exclusively on validated indicators and doing so in a more systematic manner.

ABSTRACT The present study investigated whether remembering the distant versus the recent personal past influences self-continuity levels and expected future event characteristics in a sample of immigrants. Seventy-three Turkish immigrants living in Denmark participated in three sessions involving questionnaires and life story interviews. In the first session, participants completed baseline measures of self-continuity, psychological wellbeing, acculturation, and demographics. In the second and third sessions, they recalled significant events and narrated life stories from pre-migration (distant past) and post-migration (recent past), followed by measures of self-continuity and wellbeing. After each memory recall, participants described three expected future events and rated them on phenomenological characteristics such as vividness and emotional valence. We analyzed differences in self-continuity and future event characteristics between the pre- and post-migration conditions, as well as the relationships among the variables, thematic content of future events, and their resemblance to cultural life scripts. Results revealed no significant differences in future event characteristics between the conditions. However, a small difference emerged in self-continuity levels: contrary to expectations, participants reported slightly higher self-continuity in the pre-migration condition than in the post-migration condition. These findings contribute to understanding of how autobiographical memory relate to future thinking and self in the context of migration.

ABSTRACT Autobiographical remembering plays a crucial role in regulating emotions, yet how the retrieval perspective modulates this function across discrete negative emotions remains unclear. Building on research showing that field and observer perspectives influence memory phenomenology, the present study examined how visual perspective and retrieval goals regulate anger and shame. In two experiments, participants recalled anger- or shame-related autobiographical events from either a field or observer perspective. In Study 1, they engaged in spontaneous subsequent recall, whereas in Study 2, they were instructed to recall a positive memory. Across both studies, participants tended to recall more positive memories after negative ones, supporting mood-incongruent recall and the automatic activation of mnemonic emotion regulation. Instructed recall further enhanced this positivity bias, increasing the vividness and emotional intensity of retrieved memories. The observer perspective was more effective at dampening the emotional impact of anger, whereas the field perspective amplified reliving across both emotions. Overall, findings suggest that memory-based emotion regulation operates through both automatic (Study 1) and goal-directed (Study 2) mechanisms, shaped by the emotional content of memories and the phenomenological characteristics of recall.

ABSTRACT Several studies have reported that it is relatively easy to manipulate the age of people’s earliest memory through providing priming information or warm-up questions prior to recall. When given primes that differ (e.g. ages 2/3 versus 6), the memories participants retrieved were dated earlier when given early primes and later when given late primes. One proposed explanation is that differential primes foster memory retrieval from different ages. Here we explored whether the memories themselves were from earlier versus later in a person's life chronology, or whether all that was manipulated is the dating information attached to those memories. To do this, 200 young adults were informed that earliest memories typically date from either age 2 or 4, and given example vignettes. Participants then recalled and dated their earliest memory. Independent verification and dating was provided by 117 parents and data for the remaining 83 were imputed. Results showed that participants given earlier primes dated their first memory to younger ages than did participants given later primes, consistent with prior research. However, the ages of the memories did not differ between groups according to parental information. Thus, what is manipulated may only be the attached time-tags for the memories.