Comparing semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming to reminiscence priming on an involuntary memory task

Reminiscence priming (priming from recall of the past) and semantic-to-autobiographical memory priming (priming from general information processing) have been shown to prime involuntary autobiographical memory production in the laboratory and everyday life. As these priming phenomena involve overt (reminiscence priming) or covert (semantic-to-autobiographical priming) autobiographical memory activations, questions naturally arise about which one would lead to stronger involuntary memory production. For various reasons, we hypothesized that despite this difference, both priming phenomena will lead to equivalent involuntary memory production. We tested this hypothesis by comparing reminiscence priming to semantic-to-autobiographical priming on the vigilance task (an involuntary memory task). Participants recalled memories from their past (the autobiographical group) or rated words on the familiarity of their meaning (the semantic group) and were then engaged in the vigilance task, where in between detecting the presence of vertical lines on numerous different slides, they were to report the experience of spontaneous thoughts or memories. The results showed that both groups produced equivalent primed involuntary memory production on the vigilance task. We argue that the results suggest that each of these priming phenomena have an equal likelihood of causing involuntary memory production in everyday life, and that covert memory activations can be as strong or overt activations.