The mind is a prediction machine. In most situations in which it finds itself, it has expectations as to what might happen. But when people’s expectations are invalidated by experience, the memories that gave rise to these expectations are suppressed. The present research explores the effect of these prediction errors on listener’s memories during social interaction. We reasoned that listening ...

Memories in literary texts reveal past events which complete the itinerary of a character throughout the book. Whether they are exposed from the point of view of that character or from the perspective of the other characters joining the action, the memories bring novelties about the distant or the recent past to the actual action This explorative study intends to identify memories, with an ulte...

Little is known about how survivors of extreme events cope with traumatic memories and subsequent negative life experiences. The present study compared (a) repatriated prisoners of war (RPWs) from World War II (WW II) with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (b) RPWs without PTSD, and (c) noncombat veterans on measures of general psychological functioning, appraisal, and coping. Appra...

We consider the interpretation of emotions and simil-iar phenomena as support for survival and coping in the world. Grounded in the experience of an emotional agent, certain such emotions, drives or experiences are self-oriented (homeostasis, intake, outtow: hunger, pain, irritation), while others suggest a generalized or speciic recognition of other agents or objects (curiosity , fear; or hatr...

Negative self-images appear to play a role in the maintenance of social phobia and research suggests they are often linked to earlier memories of socially traumatic events. Imagery rescripting is a clinical intervention that aims to update such unpleasant or traumatic memories, and is increasingly being incorporated in cognitive behavioral therapy programs. In previous research, we have found t...

We asked patients with either panic disorder, social phobia, or major depressive disorder and healthy control participants to describe their most frightening experience and to describe an emotionally neutral experience. Both fear and neutral autobiographical memories were audiotaped and processed through a low-pass filter that eliminated frequencies above 400 Hz, thereby abolishing semantic con...

It is well known that the need to simplify a story, to preserve its consistency and to avoid discontinuity gaps, leads to memory distortions (Schacter, 2001). These biases allow one to preclude possible dissonances between the accurate recollection of past events and one’s own current knowledge or present situations upon which one should act. While most memories are specific to individuals, the...