Reducing the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical memories: The importance of Self-Regulation Depletion

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (1) : 56-62.

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PDF(536 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (1) : 56-62.

Reducing the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical memories: The importance of Self-Regulation Depletion

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Abstract

According to previous research, the research thought of sad image motion of the individual spontaneous circulation, and interference, the content of these images is derived from the negative life events of the past. According to the autobiographical memory model, the study says it is because of people in the knowledge base of autobiography, these images are composed of many feel a particular event details of fragments rather than the overall storage, thus leading to extracting incomplete or inaccurate. Williams et al. (2007) has been confirmed after healthy individuals by the ego depletion, the vividness of autobiographical memory will be relatively reduced, and there were few studies have confirmed that ego depletion whether vividness of autobiographical memory. The purpose of the research study is to investigate that the ego depletion influent emotional vividness of autobiographical memory and emotional intensity. Andrade et al. concluded that interfering with the visuospatial slave system of working memory could potentially be used to blunt the emotional intensity of traumatic images during therapy, and thus provide an intervention tool for severely distressed patients. The therapeutic benefit of a visuospatial interference task during imaginal reliving rests on the assumption that traumatic images are visual in content. Although visual representations are indeed most common, intrusive images do occur in other modalities (e.g., sounds, smells, bodily sensations), and often comprise several sensory components (Ehlers et al., 2002; Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000). Kavanagh et al. (2001) suggested that these patients might benefit from an auditory interference task during imaginal reliving treatment. Although Andrade et al. (1997) reported no effect of concurrent articulatory suppression on ratings of vividness and emotionality of distressing images, their null finding may well reflect the emphasis on the visual sensory modality in their methodology. In particular, they used visual stimuli (photographs) to elicit emotive images, and chose anchors for their vividness rating scale that encouraged participants to form specifically visual images. Hence the effect of a concurrent phonological load on emotive imagery has yet to be adequately tested. Theoretically, dual-task interference from concurrent visuospatial or auditory tasks should depend on the specific sensory modality of the image. Thus, the present experiments were designed to investigate the effects of concurrent visual and auditory interference on emotive imagery, but using stimulus materials and rating scales that were not a priori biased towards the visual sensory modality. If the disruption proves specific to the modality of the image, this would provide a far stronger test of the applicability of the working memory model. In experiment 1, the present study used a Color Stroop task and Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), involving to test the hypothesis that deplete self-regulation resources could analogously reduce the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical. Our hypothesis that depleted participants would retrieve fewer specific memories to cues on the AMT relative to controls was supported, even when levels of mood were covaried. The results indicate that self-regulation depletion can reduce vividness and emotional intensity of emotion-related autobiographical memory. In experiment 2, the present study used Working Memory Model and Dual task interference paradigm. The results indicate that concurrent articulation don’t reduce vividness and emotional intensity ratings of auditory images to a greater extent than did eye movements, whereas concurrent eye movement and articulatory suppression reduce vividness and emotional intensity ratings of auditory images to a less extent than The central executive system. Such modality-specific dual-task interference could usefully contribute to the treatment and management of intrusive distressing images in both clinical and non-clinical settings.

Key words

Executive control resources / depletion / Memory vividness / Emotional intensity / Mood disorders

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Reducing the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical memories: The importance of Self-Regulation Depletion[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2016, 39(1): 56-62
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