The Unbidden Past: Involuntary Autobiographical Memories as a Basic Mode of Remembering
Open accessAbstract
Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal experiences that come to mind spontaneously—that is, with no preceding attempt at retrieval. They were one of Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1964) three basic kinds of memory but have been ignored by modern cognitive psychology. Recent work suggests that involuntary memories are a basic mode of remembering that operates on the same episodic memory system as voluntary (strategic) remembering and thus follows the same rules of encoding and maintenance. Due to their associative and unplanned retrieval, involuntary memories differ from voluntary memories by being more specific, by being less relevant to one’s life story and identity, and by involving more emotional reaction at the time of recall. Research on involuntary autobiographical memories has important implications for the understanding of intrusive memories in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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Memory accessibility fluctuates on seconds-to-minutes timescales during sustained wakefulness, as in tip-of-the-tongue states and spontaneous retrieval.
“Memory expression fluctuates even in response to identical cues, which suggests that ongoing brain states bias memory accessibility.”
From Infraslow histaminergic dynamics govern priming states to gate moment-to-moment memory accessibility (2026) · cites this paper as [2]
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References 21 · Cited by 258
- Authors
- Berntsen, D.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Corresponding author
- Berntsen, Dorthe
- ORCID
- Berntsen, Dorthe
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-06
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 138-142
- ISSN
- 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8721
- OpenAlex
- W2065978720
- Cited by
- 258
- References
- 21
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 6.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- pure.au.dk
- Licence
- Locations
- Current Directions in Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Keywords
- involuntary autobiographical memories, episodic memory, memory encoding, memory maintenance, intrusive memories, post-traumatic stress disorder
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