Semantic memories prime autobiographical memories: General implications and implications for everyday autobiographical remembering

Abstract

This study investigated the idea that semantic memory activation causes the activation of associated autobiographical memories (e.g., reading the word summer activates knowledge representations in semantic memory, as well as associated personal memories about summer in autobiographical memory). We tested this semantic-autobiographical memory priming hypothesis in three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were primed with concepts (e.g., summer) on a familiarity task and were then given a word-cue voluntary autobiographical memory task. In support of the hypothesis, the results showed that primed participants had more autobiographical memories overlapping with the primed concepts than control participants. In Experiment 2, participants were similarly primed, but in this case they were given a measure of involuntary autobiographical memory (i.e., Schlagman and Kvavilashvili’s (Memory & Cognition, 36, 920–932, 2008) vigilance task). The results of this experiment also supported the semantic-autobiographical memory-priming hypothesis. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative possibility (i.e., that autobiographical memory processing had occurred in the word familiarity task) by showing that semantic-autobiographical priming had resulted from a priming task (lexical decision) where autobiographical memory processing was unlikely. The implications of these findings are discussed.