ArticleConsciousness and cognition2015
The frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and future thoughts in relation to daydreaming, emotional distress, and age.
Article in Consciousness and cognition, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Convergent validation of the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory across levels of analysis in a Polish sample.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Interoception predicts mental imagery vividness: exploring a key relationship.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Involuntary and voluntary memory retrieval relies on distinct neural representations and oscillatory processes.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Neural processes of emotional conflict detection and prediction of posttraumatic stress disorder symptom clusters in traumatic injury survivors.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2025Article
- Recurrent involuntary memories and mind wandering are related but distinct.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Time, valence, and imagination: a comparative study of thoughts in restricted and unrestricted mind wandering.Psychological research · 2024Article
- A comprehensive guide to research protocols for collecting and coding involuntary past and future thoughts.MethodsX · 2024Article
- Individual differences in the frequency of voluntary & involuntary episodic memories, future thoughts, and counterfactual thoughts.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Comparing music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in young and older adults: A diary study.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2023Article
- Cognitive and non-cognitive variables influencing age-related effect of mind wandering across the adult life span.European journal of ageing · 2022Article
- Episodic-semantic interactions in spontaneous thought.Memory & cognition · 2022Review
- Searching for the past: Exploring the dynamics of direct and generative autobiographical memory reconstruction among young and cognitively normal older adults.Memory & cognition · 2021Article
- Through the gateway of the senses: investigating the influence of sensory modality-specific retrieval cues on involuntary episodic memory.Psychological research · 2021Article
- Involuntary autobiographical memories and their relation to other forms of spontaneous thoughts.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- The devil is in the details: investigating the influence of emotion on event memory using a simulated event.Psychological research · 2020Article
- My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images.Psychological research · 2020Article
- The effects of aging and an episodic specificity induction on spontaneous task-unrelated thought.PloS one · 2020Article
- Arresting visuospatial stimulation is insufficient to disrupt analogue traumatic intrusions.PloS one · 2020Article
- The tendency for experiencing involuntary future and past mental time travel is robustly related to thought suppression: an exploratory study.Psychological research · 2019Article
- Spontaneous future cognition: the past, present and future of an emerging topic.Psychological research · 2019Article
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3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We introduce a new scale, the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory (IAMI), for measuring the frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and involuntary future thoughts. Using the scale in relation to other psychometric and demographic measures provided three important, novel findings. First, the frequency of involuntary and voluntary memories and future thoughts are similarly related to general measures of emotional distress. This challenges the idea that the involuntary mode is uniquely associated with emotional distress. Second, the frequency of involuntary autobiographical remembering does not decline with age, whereas measures of daydreaming, suppression of unwanted thoughts and dissociative experiences all do. Thus, involuntary autobiographical remembering relates differently to aging than daydreaming and other forms of spontaneous and uncontrollable thoughts. Third, unlike involuntary autobiographical remembering, the frequency of future thoughts does decrease with age. This finding underscores the need for examining past and future mental time travel in relation to aging and life span development.
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