Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined events in sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive checkers
✍ Scribed by Ariane Zermatten; Martial van der Linden; Arnaud D'Argembeau; Grazia Ceschi
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 124 KB
- Volume
- 22
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
- DOI
- 10.1002/acp.1365
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined experiences were examined in checking‐ and non‐checking‐prone individuals. Participants were asked to retrieve a positive, a negative and a neutral memory, and to imagine a positive, a negative and a neutral experience. They were then requested to evaluate each event according to characteristics such as sensory and contextual details. The main results revealed that non‐checking‐prone participants reported more general vividness than checking‐prone individuals for real events. In addition, non‐checking‐prone individuals reported more visual details and vividness for real than imagined experiences, while no difference between real and imagined events was found for checking‐prone participants. These results suggest that checking‐prone participants report poor memories of real events, which could in turn explain their difficulties distinguishing between real and imagined events. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.