R/RememberingImagination/README.md

In LCBC-UiO/Questionnaires: Package with functions to calculate components and sums for LCBC questionnaires

Remembering-Imagination

Cue-Word Task

This script is not yet cleaned, and will not easily function with MOAS data without manipulation. This is coming, but likely after Christmas 2017.

Description

The task was modeled on a much-used cue-word paradigm (Schacter et al., 2007) and previously implemented in our lab (Østby et al., 2012). The task consisted on remembering past experiences and envisioning possible future scenarios in response to cue words within 2 years into the past/future. The participants were instructed to retrieve/imagine specific episodes that could happen to them within a limited period (<1day) and to not recast exact memories as future scenarios. A practice trial and six tasks were administered. A cue word was presented on a computer screen together with a word designating either “past” or “future” by use of E-prime software. The participants were then asked to think of an episode that the cue word reminded them of and to press a key when they had found a relevant episode. They were then given 40 s to think through the episode and imagine it in as much detail as possible.

The six cue words were chosen to be neutral-positive, easy to relate to, and open to many possible scenarios. The assignment of a cue word to each of the two conditions was fixed and equal for all participants, and the cue words were pairs of thematically similar words, divided between the two conditions. They were presented in Norwegian in the following order: “bursdag” (birthday-past), “ferie” (vacation/holiday-future), “skog” (forest-past), “feiring” (celebration-future), “reise” (travel-past), “sjø” (sea-future). The emotional valence and intensity of English translations of four of the words (from both conditions) were checked against the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) (Bradley et al., 1999), and all four fell within the positive affect range of the scale (7.12–8.16) and had an emotional arousal value ranging from 4.95 to 6.68. The words “celebration” and “forest” were not found in the ANEW, but were considered of similar to the equivalents “birthday” and “sea.” Each past and future episode was immediately rated by the participants on a one-page questionnaire, asking about the participant’s experience during the act of remembering/imagining. The questionnaire consisted of 12 items (Table 1). The questionnaire was partly based on the Memory Experiences Questionnaire (Sutin and Robins, 2007). The questions regarded the phenomenological experience of the episodes, rated on a five-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). The questionnaire was answered immediately after each cue-word task.

Alter depending on your study:

As the primary interest of the current study was autonoetic or phenomenological experience, regardless the moment in time where it was projected, ratings for the six responses (3 past/3 future) for each of the 12 questions were averaged and fed into a principal component analysis (PCA) from which we derived an autonoetic experience scale. To improve the PCA analysis, we additionally included (n = X) healthy participants from ongoing projects coordinated by the Centre for LCBC at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway (Neurocognitive Development/ Cognition and Plasticity Through the Life-span/ ConstructiveMem) resulting in a sample of 492 participants (age 39.5 [SD = 23.2]; age range = 9-82; 284 females).

The PCA analysis was initially conducted on the 12 questionnaire items, in R environment. Item #8 was discarded due to low sampling adequacy (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin [KMO] index < .5), item #7 was removed as it showed a negative correlation with the main factor and, item #3 was removed from the analysis as it worsened factor reliability. Thus, the autonoetic scale was finally derived from a 9-item questionnaire. The results showed that the first component alone, explained 45% of the questionnaire’s variance while the scale reliability was .85 as tested using Cronbach’s α. Finally, we derived an autonoetic score for each participant by applying factor loadings to the main study sample. Note that as the autonoetic scale was derived from an enriched sample the scores in our sample do not necessarily follow a standard normal distribution (e.g. mean ≈ 0; SD ≈ 1).

Rating scale for past and future episode

• It was difficult for me to think of this event. (R)
• I remembered/thought of sounds.
• This experience came to me in bits and pieces, not as a coherent story. (R)
• I recognized the setting in which it took place.
• It was almost like being there.
• I saw the event through my own eyes.
• The event was a blending of many similar, related events. (R)
• I viewed this as if I was an observer to the event. (R)
• I saw a lot, for instance faces, thing, colors.
• The order of happenings within the event was clear.
• I had a lot of sensory experiences (sounds, smells, tastes, etc.).
• This event was easy for me to think of.

Five-point Likert scale: 1, disagree; 2, partly disagree; 3, neither agree nor disagree; 4, partly agree; 5, agree. Items that are reversed during scoring are marked with (R). Items that are removed from the final PCA extraction are displayed in bold.

References

Bradley, M.M., Lang, P.J., Bradley, M.M., Lang, P.J., 1999. Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Instruction manual and affective ratings. doi:10.1.1.306.3881

Østby, Y., Walhovd, K.B., Tamnes, C.K., Grydeland, H., Westlye, L.T., Fjell, A.M., 2012. Mental time travel and default-mode network functional connectivity in the developing brain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109, 16800–16804. doi:10.1073/pnas.1210627109

Schacter, D.L., Addis, D.R., Buckner, R.L., 2007. Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 8, 657–661. doi:10.1038/nrn2213

Sutin, A.R., Robins, R.W., 2007. Phenomenology of autobiographical memories: the memory experiences questionnaire. Mem. Hove Engl. 15, 390–411. doi:10.1080/09658210701256654

LCBC-UiO/Questionnaires documentation built on July 18, 2023, 6:45 p.m.