The flashbulb-like nature of memory for the first COVID-19 case and the impact of the emergency. A cross-national survey.

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) refer to vivid and long-lasting autobiographical memories for the circumstances in which people learned of a shocking and consequential public event. A cross-national study across eleven countries aimed to investigate FBM formation following the first COVID-19 case news in each country and test the effect of pandemic-related variables on FBM. Participants had detailed memories of the date and others present when they heard the news, and had partially detailed memories of the place, activity, and news source.

Sad reflections of happy times: depression vulnerability and experiences of sadness and happiness upon retrieval of positive autobiographical memories.

Instructed retrieval of positive autobiographical memories typically improves mood for healthy individuals, but not always for depressed individuals. No mood improvement may occur when depressed individuals retrieve positive memories that are self-incongruent, or when they ruminate upon positive memory retrieval. Mindfulness is associated with lower self-incongruency and rumination.

Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events.

Remembering future life goals: Retrospective future thinking affects life goal qualities.

Personal goals are important for the construction and organization of episodic future thought. This study examines the impact of two future thinking perspectives on qualities of mental goal representations. Here, 142 participants (M = 21.

Subjective judgments on direct and generative retrieval of autobiographical memory: The role of interoceptive sensibility and emotion.

Autobiographical remembering is a subjective experience, and whether retrieval is perceived to occur through involuntary or voluntary, direct or generative cognitive processes is also based on subjective intuition. The present study examined factors that may contribute to the subjective judgment that occurs when we perceive memories as being retrieved directly (i.e.

Autobiographical memory functions and posttraumatic stress symptoms across adulthood.

Previous research has documented robust individual differences in the functions served by autobiographical memories, and shown that different autobiographical memory functions are related to both positive and negative indicators of psychological well-being, and that their frequency varies with age. In this study, we examined the unique relationship between autobiographical memory functions and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and whether such relationships varied with age across adulthood. A representative sample of 1040 adult Danes (20-70 years old) reported the frequency with which they recall autobiographical memories for different purposes as well as their level of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

Negative autobiographical memories in social anxiety disorder: A comparison with panic disorder and healthy controls.

Background And Objectives: Empirical interest in mental imagery in social anxiety disorder (SAD) has grown over the past years but still little is known about the specificity to SAD. The present study therefore examines negative autobiographical memories in participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD), compared to patients with panic disorder (PD), and healthy controls (HCs).

Methods: A total of 107 participants retrieved four memories cued by verbal phrases associated with either social anxiety (SA) or panic anxiety (PA), with two memories for each cue category.