Semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming: Priming from thoughts and imagined activities

Research has shown that the activation of semantic memories leads to the activation of autobiographical memories. Known as semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming, this form of priming has been demonstrated to prime involuntary autobiographical memories with a wide variety of different stimuli (e.g., words, pictures, sentences, sounds, tactile stimuli, etc.). Our goal in the current study was to extend semantic-to-autobiographical priming to two unexplored processes, activities and thoughts. In Experiment 1, we explored priming from activities and thoughts by having participants imagine activities (e.g., imagine yourself exercising) and think about topics (e.g., think about holidays). These priming sessions occurred in between vigilance task trials. The vigilance task measures involuntary autobiographical memories by presenting participants with slides that contain lines and word phrases. Participants are instructed to note when slides contain vertical lines, as well as note if they experience spontaneous thoughts or memories. The slides used in our study contained phrases that were both related and unrelated to the primes. In Experiment 2, the priming phase and the vigilance task phase were separated by several minutes. The results of both experiments showed that primed participants produced more involuntary memories related to the content of the imagined activity and thought primes than control participants, who received imagined activity and thought primes that were unrelated to the vigilance task cues. The results support the idea that activities and thoughts can influence the production of involuntary autobiographical memories in everyday life. The results also support the idea that semantic-to-autobiographical priming is diverse.