Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Justification of Technique for Eliciting CLR Experience
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Apparatus
2.3. Materials
- Each participant recollected 8 SDMs, prioritizing memories addressing different life themes and ages. The exact instruction was as follows: “Recollect, in as much detail as possible, eight episodes from your past that represent to the maximum degree your personal traits and illustrate what kind of person you are”;
- Each SDM was marked with a unique two-word title cue;
- The association between the target SDM and the cue title was tested three times successively. In each trial, the participants were told to feel free to allocate as much time to complete the visual image as they needed;
- Each SDM cue title was audio recorded separately, while a participant loudly repeated it for 30 s;
- The audio recordings were superimposed on each other with a digital music editor, AdobePremiereProCS3 Portable.exe. As a result, all SDM cue titles could be perceived by the listener simultaneously. It sounded like a choir of verbal cues of personal memories.
2.4. Procedure
3. Results
3.1. Self-Reports
3.2. Eye Tracking Results
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Availability of Data and Materials
Abbreviations
CLR | Compressed life review |
AM | Autobiographical memory |
SDM | Self-defining autobiographical memories |
NDE | Near-death experience |
WM | Working memory |
LTM | Long-term memory |
SAPSDMC | Simultaneous audio presentation of self-defining memory cues |
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No. | 8 Superimposed SDM Cues | 8 Superimposed Neutral Cues |
---|---|---|
1 * | Severe dizziness, like on the carousel and then trembling. After a while, a strong desire for activity. | Only noise |
2 | Changes in rhythm were perceived as music, which was not disturbing, but like a radio far away. Did not understand what the program was about, but thought the voices were soothing. | Imperceptible bunch of sounds. |
3 | Similar to the previous one. Maybe this time I was prepared, so it was not that frustrating. | Almost vomiting, very unpleasant feeling. |
4 | Completely new set of words. I guess that there were a couple of my memories’ titles. Am I right? | I heard few words, namely “ice”, “morning”. I forgot the rest. |
5 * | The sensation appeared as in the childhood, when you leave your body and begin to unwind, and then spin in the other direction. Like in a funnel. From the top to the bottom. Something felt bursting from the inside. | Noise, it felt like being about a catastrophic headache. |
6 | Made me sleepy. Might be tired from the long session. My voice, as well. My voice transformed by some specific software. | I recognized my own voice, but the words sounded lengthy. |
7 * | Somewhere about the middle of the track I was struck by the pleasant thought that all this was with me, and that all this was me and about me. Pictures began to appear. I think these were memories, but I cannot describe specific scenes. If I need to give a metaphor…a tunnel, a huge luminous tunnel, and I was a small crumb inside it. | I tried to differentiate words and phrases. Not very successfully. I expected that you would ask me later about how many phrases were presented. |
8 * | I did not perceive any memories from this group of words. Maybe once, but I’m not sure it was because of the track. Suddenly, I had a thought about my grandma. I really, really miss her. Wait! I had more. A chain of memories. The scene when a saw my grandma for the last time. I now can recall many. | I was surprised by the strange sounds. It was like a noise in the forest, perhaps the cries of wild animals. For a moment, I was scared. |
9 | I was pretty sure that these were my phrases on top of one another, which was much more clear than earlier. My voices seemed to demand something from me. They were angry. For a moment, I felt guilty. | It reminded me of an orchestra setting before a concert. I assumed I would hear my voice, but it did not sound like my voice. |
10 | I immediately heard the phrase “black chestnuts” and then I heard only that as the main voice. Other voices seemed quieter and sounded background. It seemed a bit longer than the previous “choir”, but definitely much longer than single repeating phrases. Maybe too loud. | In a couple of seconds, I lost the sense of what was going on. |
11 | A kind of mantra. Could this be my personal mantra? I need to try a couple more times. | Shamanic tune. So they probably call for rain. |
12 * | No time. No time at all. I dived deeply and stayed there. A peace, calm, eternity. My past and my future both inside and outside me. | Strange feeling of empty mind. Tried to think about something and found out that it was impossible. So just waited for the end. |
13 | I can say the same I already said about the previous audio. Does not make sense to me. | A cow mooing sound. A herd of cows. Seems it was long. Endured to the end just because you asked me. |
14 * | I felt like I jumped into a tunnel through the center of a huge mountain. The scenes circled around me extremely fast, but I could snatch out single words. | Bad choir without harmony. Maybe I needed more time to get a taste for it. |
15 * | When I became able to adjust my hearing and joined the situation, I noticed that I stopped listening and started remembering that day. I stopped hearing that something was playing in the headsets. I felt again that I was a little girl who was going to her friend to stay with her so that she would not be bored and scared of being alone at home. | As if chirping birds. Loud twitter in spring street. I did not immediately understand that these were human voices. A very strange feeling. |
16 * | What a pleasure this new feeling! Feeling of internal integrity, completeness. It started when I understood that it was my life, the precious fragments of my life in once, with me now. I noticed that I was smiling while remembering this. I felt completely inside my memories, like in a safe capsule. | The chatter of unfamiliar voices. Sometimes separate words and exclamations erupted. I did not know how to figure it out. |
17 | Not so disturbing as the previous one. Maybe it was shorter. No special sensation, except I am bit tired. | Nothing to say. Just a disturbing noise. |
18 * | Cosmic feeling. I felt like an astronaut who is connected with a spaceship and at the same time flies into open space. It was as if I were looking at the Earth from space. Only instead of the Earth I saw my life. | These were notes of my words superimposed on each other in parallel. Choir of my voices. I felt surprised. |
19 | The same mumble, but only more persistent. I was no longer able to be distracted. Therefore, I had to listen to the end. | It was like senile rushing. At first I listened, but then I tried to distract myself, because all was the same, nothing was clear. |
20 * | Pictures began to appear in my mind of how we played with my friends, of how we imagined ourselves as “adult aunts” who were about to relax over a cup of tea, of how we dreamed and imagined our future. These pictures did not stay in one place, they moved into a kind of funnel. | Passages of phrases succeeded each other extremely quickly. One phrase “midnight conversation” seemed to me pronounced in a different voice and I began to repeat it until the end of listening. |
Single SDM Cue | Single Neutral Cue | p | Superimposed SDM Cues | p | Superimposed Neutral Cues | p | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CLR Experiencers | Non-Experiencers | CLR Experiencers | Non-Experiencers | ||||||
Fixation frequency per min | 48.000 (31.868) | 70.500 (38.140) | ** | 44.400 (40.418) | 84.000 (44.899) | * | 86.400 (49.574) | 75.000 (49.173) | ns |
Fixation duration (ms) | 1864.180 (1619.965) | 1308.135 (1586.248) | ** | 2643.820 (2280.761) | 1019.280 (1014.416) | * | 1048.000 (1059.504) | 1328.100 (1430.988) | ns |
Saccade frequency per min | 29.700 (25.933) | 48.000 (33.717) | * | 33.000 (34.438) | 67.800 (39.703) | * | 64.800 (43.062) | 58.200 (42.619) | ns |
Duration of saccades (ms) | 32.810 (14.090) | 36.325 (12.286) | ns | 26.030 (18.716) | 37.850 (14.985) | * | 41.900 (11.722) | 40.240 (7.598) | ns |
Scanpath length in px. | 1839.000 (3518.358) | 3029.450 (3281.443) | * | 1446.900 (1789.653) | 3769.400 (3462.493) | ** | 5326.300 (4867.091) | 3247.000 (5215.510) 1 | ns |
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Nourkova, V.V. Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker. Behav. Sci. 2020, 10, 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs10030060
Nourkova VV. Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker. Behavioral Sciences. 2020; 10(3):60. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs10030060
Chicago/Turabian StyleNourkova, Veronika V. 2020. "Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker" Behavioral Sciences 10, no. 3: 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs10030060