Abstract

The present study investigated the differences in the attributes of episode that participants remembered between recalled words and non-recalled ones in incidental free recall. Participants were asked to judge whether an episode came to mind when each target word was presented in the orienting task phase, followed by an unexpected free recall and rating phases. In the rating phase, they were asked to rate the degree of three attributes, vividness, pleasantness, and nostalgia, for each episode. Positive correlations among the three attributes were observed for episodes of recalled words, whereas for episodes of non-recalled words, they were not. These results showed strong relationships among the attributes of episodes that were determinants of the effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration on incidental recall regarding distinctiveness.