Observer memories may not be for everyone

ABSTRACT

Six studies explored the preponderance of people who experience third-person perspective observer memories during autobiographical memory retrieval. The concept of first-person field versus observer memories has been extensively used in the areas of cognitive, social, and clinical psychology. An implicit assumption is the idea that most people use both of these perspectives. What varies are the circumstances that bias people to use one perspective over another for a given autobiographical memory. We challenge that assumption across six studies by showing that, while there are some people who report to regularly have observer memories, there are also those that report to rarely or never have them. These reports were found to be related to levels of reported dissociative experiences. We discuss how this difference in the experience of observer memories may also reflect other innate characteristics, and may correspond to predispositions for various pathologies, including depression, social phobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

KEYWORDS:

• Observer memory
• field memory
• autobiographical memory
• memory perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Note that there were some people that reported not experiencing field memories. We note that these are typically a small number of people. This could reflect either (a) an even rarer set of people who rarely or never have field memories, or, more likely, the inclusion of people in our data set that consistently produced responses at the low end of rating scales or misinterpreted the question.

2 We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.