Significance of Autobiographical Episodes and Spacing Effects in Incidental Memory

Abstract

Participants were presented with target words on two occasions, and were asked each time to generate a memory of a past episode associated with the targets. Participants were also instructed to rate the importance (significance elaboration) or pleasantness of the episode (pleasantness elaboration) in an orienting task, followed by an unexpected recall test. Significance elaboration led to better recall than pleasantness elaboration, but only in the spaced presentation. The spaced presentation led to better free recall than massed presentation with significance elaboration, but the difference between the two types of presentation was not observed with pleasantness elaboration. These results suggest that the significance of an episode is more critical than the pleasantness of an episode in determining the effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration in facilitating recall.