Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues

Mazzoni, Giuliana; Vannucci, Manila; Batool, Iram

doi:10.3758/s13421-014-0420-3

Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues

Mazzoni, Giuliana; Vannucci, Manila; Batool, Iram

Authors

Giuliana Mazzoni

Manila Vannucci

Iram Batool

Abstract

In two experiments, pictorial cues were compared with their verbal labels to assess their effectiveness in eliciting involuntary autobiographical memories. Cues were relatively complex in Experiment 1 (e.g., relaxing on a beach) and simple objects in Experiment 2 (e.g., a ball). In both experiments, participants went through a vigilance task in which they were presented with frequent nontarget and rare target visual stimuli. Pictures or their corresponding verbal labels were also displayed on both target and nontarget stimuli, but participants were told that these were irrelevant to the task. They were asked to interrupt the vigilance task whenever they became aware of task-unrelated mental contents and to report them. In both experiments, more involuntary memories were elicited in the verbal cue condition, rather than in the pictorial cue condition. This result is discussed in relation to previous work that highlighted the greater effectiveness of verbal cues in memory tasks.

Citation

Mazzoni, G., Vannucci, M., & Batool, I. (2014). Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues. Memory & cognition, 42(7), 1076-1085. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0420-3

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	May 29, 2014
Publication Date	2014-10
Deposit Date	Apr 28, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Apr 28, 2015
Journal	Memory & cognition
Print ISSN	0090-502X
Electronic ISSN	1532-5946
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	42
Issue	7
Pages	1076-1085
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0420-3
Keywords	Autobiographical memory; Involuntary memories; Pictorial cues; Verbal cues
Public URL	https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/373076
Publisher URL	http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-014-0420-3
Additional Information	The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0420-3