ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Involuntary autobiographical memories and their relation to other forms of spontaneous thoughts.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparing Aha! Moments in Problem Solving and Generative Ideation.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- Convergent validation of the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory across levels of analysis in a Polish sample.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Popular music and movies as autobiographical memory cues.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- The advantages of aging: greater stability of self-representation in older adults is linked to higher well-being.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Observational
- Mechanisms through which sleep influences intrusive memories: protocol for a trauma film paradigm study.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- Further unpacking age-related differences in mind wandering: The roles of emotional valence and meta-awareness.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Spurious autobiographical memories of psychosis: a dopamine-gated neuroplasticity account for relapse and treatment-resistant psychosis.Psychological medicine · 2025Review
- Meta-memory (prediction) of specific autobiographical recall: An experimental approach using a modified autobiographical memory test.Memory & cognition · 2024Article
- [Trauma and memory-A contribution to the current debate in law and psychotherapy].Der Nervenarzt · 2024Review
- Article
- The Subjective Experience of Autobiographical Remembering: Conceptual and Methodological Advances and Challenges.Journal of Intelligence · 2024Review
- Trauma-related intrusive memories and anterior hippocampus structural covariance: an ecological momentary assessment study in posttraumatic stress disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Proust and involuntary retrieval.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Differences in autobiographical memories reported using text and voice during everyday life.Memory (Hove, England) · 2023Article
- Journeying to the past: time travel and mental time travel, how far apart?Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Investigating the role of involuntary retrieval in music-evoked autobiographical memories.Consciousness and cognition · 2022Article
- Development of the function of autobiographical memories evoked by odor scale for older Japanese people.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Exploring the role of digital media dependency on the relationship between personal involvement and flashbulb memory during the pandemic: Empirical evidence from Mainland China.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Offline perception: an introduction.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal events that come to mind spontaneously-that is, with no conscious initiation of the retrieval process. Such spontaneously arising memories were long ignored in cognitive psychology, which generally has focused on controlled and strategic forms of remembering, studied in laboratory settings. Recent evidence shows that involuntary memories of past events are highly frequent in daily life, and that they represent a context-sensitive, and associative way of recollecting past events that involves little executive control. They operate by constraints that favour recent events and events with a distinct feature overlap to the current situation, which optimizes the probability of functional relevance to the ongoing situation. In addition to adults, they are documented in young children and great apes and may be an ontogenetic and evolutionary forerunner of strategic retrieval of past events. Findings suggest that intrusive involuntary memories observed clinically after traumatic events should be viewed as a dysfunctional subclass of otherwise functional involuntary autobiographical memories. Because of their highly constrained, situation-dependent and automatic nature, involuntary autobiographical memories form a distinct category of spontaneous thought that cannot be equated with mind wandering. This article is part of the theme issue 'Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.
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