Emotional and temporal order effects – a comparison between word-cued and important autobiographical memories recall orders

ABSTRACT

The retrieval mechanisms associated with the recall of autobiographical memories (AMs) may differ according to the cueing method used to elicit AMs. In the present study, we provide a systematic comparison between word-cued and important AMs in terms of two recall order effects, namely a temporal and an emotional order effect. The sample comprised 104 adults aged between 59 and 90 years. On two measurement occasions, participants recalled up to 20 word-cued and 15 important AMs. For each memory, participants provided their age at the time when the event occurred (age-at-event) and rated its emotionality. Order effects were analysed based on multivariate multilevel model with autoregressive effects for emotionality and age-at-event, respectively. Whereas word-cued AMs showed a stronger emotional order effect, important AMs were recalled temporarily ordered. Individuals differed in the extent to which they ordered AMs along a temporal or emotional dimension. These differences could partly be explained by personality traits. For instance, higher scores on neuroticism were associated with a stronger emotional order effect in both memory types. Findings are discussed in terms of the retrieval mechanisms that are involved in the recall of word-cued and important memory recall and how they may be affected by personality.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiographical memory
• retrieval mechanism
• recall order
• personality traits
• emotionality

Acknowledgements

The order of authors is on a nominal scale; all authors have contributed equally.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Open practices statements

The data as well as the syntax that support the findings are available on request from the corresponding author. Data were analysed using SAS, Version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc, 2015). This study’s design and its analysis were not pre-registered.

Notes

1 As multilevel models are rather complex, conducting a power analysis for multilevel models (with autoregressive effects) is complicated and unambiguous conclusions are difficult to make in many cases (Kreft & de Leeuw, 1998). The sample size of the present study was guided by general suggestions for the use of multilevel models (e.g., Maas & Hox, 2005) as well as by our previous studies in which we investigated order effects in AMs (e.g., Zimprich & Nusser, 2023; Nusser & Zimprich, 2021).

2 Parts of the data (i.e., important AMs) have been published with respect to recall trajectories of important AMs (see Nusser et al., 2022) and developmental themes represented in important AMs (Nusser, Zimprich, et al., 2023).

3 For the following analysis, the AMs at the first output position were excluded as only those AMs that had at least one “predecessor” can be used in order to form a first-order AR-effect. Hence, the numbers of the AMs as well as the estimates for the mean age-at-event, emotionality respectively (i.e., intercept) displayed in Table 2 differ from those provided in the descriptive statistics.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.