Orally retrieved negative autobiographical events are associated with increased heart rate as compared with fabricated ones.

Abstract

While it is well-established that authentic emotional autobiographical memories elicit physiological responses, research suggests that this elicitation can also occur for fabricated autobiographical memories. Yet challenges arise from awareness discrepancies when considering two research fields: Participants in memory studies may be unaware of producing false memories, while liars are aware of fabricating false events. Hence, in two experiments, we compared the psychophysiological pattern of true autobiographical memories with fabricated memory narratives. Using noninvasive biometric devices to measure heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL), participants were tasked with recalling both true and fabricated negative and neutral autobiographical experiences in a written (Experiment 1) and oral (Experiment 2) way. While in Experiment 1, no statistically significant differences were detected in participants' physiological responses across different recall types, in Experiment 2 we found higher HR responses during the recollection of true negative memories as compared with true neutral and fabricated memory accounts. These latter findings confirm that negative autobiographical memories might be associated with increased HR responses when they are recalled verbally. Furthermore, they suggest that people's awareness of memory authenticity (i.e., recalling true versus fabricated events) may be linked to corresponding physiological reactions linked to specific recollections.