The role of direct and generative retrieval in access to involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories

Two distinct retrieval mechanisms were used in access to autobiographical memories, namely direct and generative retrieval. To date, memories accessed through direct and generative retrieval were only compared in voluntary remembering context. In addition, previous studies comparing involuntary (IAMs) and voluntary (VAMs) autobiographical memories did not take this distinction into account. Since involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) were also argued to be accessed through direct retrieval, the present study aimed to compare IAMs with directly retrieved (DR-VAMs) and generated memories (GEN-VAMs) separately. IAMs and VAMs were collected in two consecutive sessions by using Vigilance Task and Galton-Crovitz cue-word technique, respectively. Same 62 individuals (44 female, 18 male) participated in both sessions. The results revealed that IAMs were similar to DR-VAMs in many aspects, although the latter was deliberately recalled. Specifically, both IAMs and DR-VAMs were retrieved faster than GEN-VAMs. They had more emotional impact on rememberer and they included more specific events, compared to GEN-VAMs. However, the difference in specificity was found to be caused by the personal relevance of the cue; when same cues were used to trigger IAMs and VAMs, higher specificity of IAMs disappeared. Additionally, it was observed that phenomenology of deliberate and spontaneous recollections of the same recent events were not different. Overall, the present findings suggest that most of the differences between IAMs and VAMs result from direct and generative retrieval distinction, rather than deliberate or spontaneous recall of memories.