The flashbulb-like nature of memory for the first COVID-19 case and the impact of the emergency. A cross-national survey.

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) refer to vivid and long-lasting autobiographical memories for the circumstances in which people learned of a shocking and consequential public event. A cross-national study across eleven countries aimed to investigate FBM formation following the first COVID-19 case news in each country and test the effect of pandemic-related variables on FBM. Participants had detailed memories of the date and others present when they heard the news, and had partially detailed memories of the place, activity, and news source. China had the highest FBM specificity. All countries considered the COVID-19 emergency as highly significant at both the individual and global level. The Classification and Regression Tree Analysis revealed that FBM specificity might be influenced by participants' age, subjective severity (assessment of COVID-19 impact in each country and relative to others), residing in an area with stringent COVID-19 protection measures, and expecting the pandemic effects. Hierarchical regression models demonstrated that age and subjective severity negatively predicted FBM specificity, whereas sex, pandemic impact expectedness, and rehearsal showed positive associations in the total sample. Subjective severity negatively affected FBM specificity in Turkey, whereas pandemic impact expectedness positively influenced FBM specificity in China and negatively in Denmark.

The impact of COVID-19 trauma on healthcare workers: Examining the relationship between stress and growth through the lens of memory.

The COVID-19 pandemic constituted tremendous traumatic stress among the frontline healthcare workers. In the present study, we investigated relationships of two types of rumination, namely brooding and reflection, with traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth and the mediating role of recollective experience in these relationships. A total of 88 healthcare workers (75% female, Mage  = 54.91) actively providing service to COVID-19 patients reported two memories of events that impacted them the most at the first peak of the pandemic and rated their recollective experience (i.e., phenomenological characteristics of memories). We used structural equation modelling to test whether recollective experience mediated the link of brooding and reflection with post-trauma reactions of stress and growth. The findings showed that brooding and reflection were associated with higher levels of traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. Importantly, recollective experience mediated the relationship of rumination with traumatic stress but this differed for the type of rumination. Higher brooding was associated with greater traumatic stress and that relationship was independent of how well the memories were recollected, while for reflection, high reflection was associated with stronger recollective experience, which predicted higher traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth. The present study shows the functional dimensions of reflective rumination and presents novel findings that demonstrates the discrete mnemonic mechanisms underlying the association between brooding, reflection, and post-trauma reactions.

Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

An online diary study testing the role of functional and dysfunctional self-licensing in unhealthy snacking.

In the present study, we aimed to investigate how two types of self-licensing (functional and dysfunctional self-licensing) are related to unhealthy snack consumption. Self-licensing refers to the act of using justifications before gratifications and has been associated with higher snack consumption. Previous research has found that while functional self-licensing decreases unhealthy snack consumption, dysfunctional self-licensing increases the number of calories taken from unhealthy snacks. Building upon existing evidence, we addressed functional and dysfunctional self-licensing to investigate how self-licensing behaviors are associated with daily variables (i.e., stress and sleep) and unhealthy snacking habits. Participants (N = 124) were given a battery of measures at the start of the week and asked to send their snack consumption every night for a week via an online questionnaire, along with daily stress and sleep items. The data were analyzed with Hierarchical Linear Modelling. Neither self-licensing measures nor unhealthy snacking habits predicted unhealthy snack consumption. Daily stress was associated with lower unhealthy snack consumption. However, the interaction between daily stress and functional self-licensing was significant, suggesting that on stressful days functional self-licensers consume even fewer unhealthy snacks compared to less stressful days. Functional and dysfunctional self-licensing are rather new constructs which is why examining their effects is important for further research. However, in contrast to the existing evidence, we failed to find an effect of both types of self-licensing on snack consumption, suggesting the effect depends on potential contextual or individual-specific factors. Future research using a dieting sample is warranted for a better understanding of how functional and dysfunctional self-licensing operate.

Representing the collective past: public event memories and future simulations in Turkey.

Common processes involved in remembering and predicting personal and public events have led researchers to study public events as a part of autobiographical memory. In the present study, we asked for past events and future predictions and examined the temporal distribution and factors that made these salient in event representations. A sample of 1577 individuals reported six most important public events since their birth and six future events that they expected. Past events mostly came from the recent past and were negative in valence. Similarly, future predictions consisted of negative events that are expected to occur in the near past. We did not find a reminiscence bump but there was a strong recency effect. Despite being inconsistent with some literature, this supports the view that remembering the past is largely influenced by the current goals and experiences. Also, in predicting what is remembered from the past and what is expected in the future, what individuals believed others would report appeared as a robust predictor.

Autobiographical remembering regulates emotions: a functional perspective.

Emotional deviation has been considered an essential factor in emotion regulation, in that, attempts to compensate for the deviation is reflected on cognitive processes. In the present study, we focused on autobiographical remembering and tested the functional role of memory on emotion regulation. We specifically examined the congruence effect in individuals' subsequent memory reports after recalling emotional events. Individuals were randomly assigned to three groups to report either sadness or anger evoking events or emotionally unspecified events that they experienced in the last five years. Results supported mood-incongruence, but only for the emotional memory groups. Despite highly negative memories reported in the initial recall, individuals in anger- and sad-memory groups revealed an up-regulation trend in subsequent recall. Furthermore, sadness and anger induction affected phenomenological features of the subsequently reported memory. Overall, our findings supported for the emotion regulation function of remembering that serves counter-regulation of the negative emotion. We discuss potential mechanisms in the light of explanations by a functional approach to autobiographical memory.

Latent constructs model explaining the attachment-linked variation in autobiographical remembering.

In the current study, we proposed a latent constructs model to characterise the qualitative aspects of autobiographical remembering and investigated the structural relations in the model that may vary across individuals. Primarily, we focused on the memories of romantic relationships and argued that attachment anxiety and avoidance would be reflected in the ways that individuals encode, rehearse, or remember autobiographical memories in close relationships. Participants reported two positive and two negative relationship-specific memories and rated the characteristics for each memory. As predicted, the basic memory model yielded appropriate fit, indicating that event characteristics (EC) predicted the frequency of rehearsal (RC) and phenomenology at retrieval (PC). When attachment variables were integrated, the model showed that rehearsal mediated the link between anxiety and PC, especially for negative memories. On the other hand, for avoidance EC was the key factor mediating the link between avoidance and RC, as well as PC. Findings were discussed with respect to autobiographical memory functions emphasising a systematically, integrated framework.