Differences in autobiographical memories reported using text and voice during everyday life

Abstract

Autobiographical memories frequently occur during everyday life. One of the most common approaches to measuring memories in everyday life is a diary method: Participants record memories as they occur by writing down these memories in a paper diary or typing them on a smartphone. Conversely, many laboratory-based studies of autobiographical memory require participants to describe their memories out loud in a spoken manner. Here, we sought to directly compare memories recorded via typing to those spoken out loud in a smartphone diary study. Participants reported or, autobiographical memories that occurred over a period of four days either by typing (n = 43) or recording themselves orally describing memories (n = 39) using a smartphone app. Results indicated that the audio recording group reported memories more frequently and these memories contained a greater number of words, while the text group reported memories more promptly after they occurred. Additionally, the typing group reported memories that were episodically richer and contained a greater proportion of perceptual details. This work has important implications for future autobiographical memory studies in the lab, online, and using diary methods, and suggests that certain reporting modalities may be advantageous depending on the specific research focus.

Keywords: Autobiographical memory; everyday life; involuntary; naturalistic.

Figure 1.

A) Number of memories B) Word count C) Time between memory retrieval and when the memory was logged. Bar graphs indicate mean, error bars indicate standard error of the mean, individual points indicate individual subjects. ** p<0.01, ****p<0.001

Figure 2.

LIWC Data. A) Affective words B) Social words C) Cognitive words D) Perceptual words. Bar graphs indicate mean, error bars indicate standard error of the mean, individual points indicate individual subjects. Y-axes depict the percentage of words that fall into each category (averaged across all memories for each participant). ** p<0.01

Figure 3.

AI Data. A) Internal details, B) External details, C) Internal/total ratio. Bar graphs indicate mean, error bars indicate standard error of the mean, individual points indicate individual subjects. Y-axis for internal and external details indicate composite scores, while the y-axis for the ratio of internal/total indicates the ratio (averaged across all memories within each participant). * p<0.05, ****p<0.001

Figure 4.. Regression results.

The top row illustrates significant main effects of group, memory specificity, and rehearsal frequency. The middle row illustrates significant interactions with group and the subjective rating variables: memory vividness, valence, and importance. The bottom row illustrates the beta estimates and 95% confidence intervals for the estimates for each of the predictors in the model.

Figure 5.

Proportion of cue types for audio and text groups. Numbers indicate the total number of memories reported for each cue type per group. Bar heights illustrate the proportion of total memory reports by cue type (irrespective of group). Cue categories are also ordered top to bottom from the category with the most reported memories to the least. Bar widths illustrate the proportion of memory reports by group (within cue type). O/S = “other sensory.”