In everyday life, on the other hand, there are many cases in which memories come to us, so to speak, without any deliberate effort on our part. Such memories are usually called involuntary memories (or "mind boggling", "spontaneous thoughts", "involuntary memory", etc.). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayThis essay is prepared with the aim of explaining in detail the difference between involuntary memory and voluntary memory. I will begin our article by giving precise definitions of our key concepts, from which I will move on to the main body of the discussion. Finally, I will draw an overall conclusion. Involuntary memory, also known as involuntary explicit memory, involuntary conscious memory, involuntary conscious memory, and more commonly involuntary memory, is a subcomponent of memory that occurs when cues encountered in life daily life evoke memories of the past without conscious effort. Voluntary memory, its binary opposite, is characterized by a deliberate effort to remember the past (Tulving, E., & Donaldson, W. (1972). We can further define the two key terms by stating that involuntary memories are explicit memories of personal events that come to mind without a prior attempt at retrieval (Berntsen, 2009). Their counterpart is voluntary memories – that is, personal memories that follow a strategic retrieval process. and controlled. Memory studies have focused on the latter's ability to recall our personal past and imagine our potential future. frequently, memories of past events and images of possible future events arise involuntarily, that is, without any previous attempt to produce them (Berntsen, 1996). Most “formal” situations in which memory is involved involve voluntary, controlled retrieval. The best examples are achievement tests, in which students must probe their memories to find requested information. In fact, most laboratory studies of memory, such as those involving free recall tasks, paired associate tasks, and general information questions, attempt to exploit voluntary retrieval. In terms of the path metaphor, voluntary memories involve constructing a path to our memories. Also in daily life, controlled recall is common, but it can also be private, as when one thinks back to previous experiences without intending to report from memory. An example is when one walks alone or thinks about one's past before falling asleep. Each memory is presumably colored by previous memories and affects later memories. Important episodes are certainly recalled repeatedly. Frequently remembered episodes become schematized. Schematization likely involves a dilution of the distinction between experienced and inferred information (Neisser, 1967). As we will see later, voluntary retrieval involves a variety of metacognitive processes that monitor and control the course of memorization, assessing the truth value of the retrieved information. , regulating recall, filling gaps and engaging in rebuilding processes. Voluntary recovery usually serves some function. Obviously, in tests ofsuccess, the person's goal is to provide the correct answer. The same goes for many game shows. The personal and private search for one's memory is also often motivated by the desire to know what "really" happened (Kvavilashvili, L. and Mandler, G. (2004). Compared to voluntary memories, involuntary memories involve more frequently specific episodes and events they tend to have more impact on mood at the time of recovery (eG, Berntsen & Hall, 2004). life and identity (Berntsen, 2009) These differences are most likely due to the fact that retrieval of involuntary memories generally requires distinct cue matching (Berntsen, Staugaard, & Sørensen, 2012). specific versus more abstract knowledge of events, as well as the fact that rapid and uncontrollable retrieval of involuntary memories leaves little room for regulation of earlier emotions. In summary, involuntary memories are common in daily life, their activation is facilitated by situational cues, and they typically occur in situations of diffuse attention. They share many characteristics with voluntary memories, such as a predominance of emotionally positive events, but are the result of a more associative and context-sensitive form of retrieval that requires less effort. Involuntary memories are at least as common in daily life as voluntary memories. Berntsen, Staugaard, & Sørensen, 2012. Involuntary memories and future thoughts can be seen as related to notions of mind wandering (e.g., Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). daydreaming and task-irrelevant images and thoughts, all of which refer to thought processes that occur in the absence of specific situational demands. The notions of daydreaming, mind wandering, and task-irrelevant thoughts are very similar conceptually and empirically in that they are all broadly defined as the mental content that occurs when attention wanders of a primary task and the person instead engages in private, internal thought processes. (Goldstein and Fortgang, 1970). However, these notions differ from the concepts of involuntary memories and involuntary future thoughts in several important ways. First, the mental content of daydreaming or mind wandering need not be episodic or. In contrast, involuntary memories and involuntary future thoughts by definition involve a mental experience of a personal event. Second, daydreaming and mind wandering may be voluntary in that the person may intentionally choose to disengage from an external task in order to pursue an internal stream of thought (McMillan et al., 2013). Cognitive theorists have considered involuntary memories to be rare. For example, a scientist wishing to study them “can only sit and wait, hoping for the improbable” (Miller, 1962). Tulving (1983) argued that successful recall of the episodic memory system was dependent on being in retrieval mode. It is rare for environmental stimuli to activate conscious episodic memories through purely associative mechanisms outside of the retrieval mode. “Accessing or updating information in the episodic system tends to be deliberate and generally requires conscious effort” (p. 46). “Few things we perceive make us think of previous events in our own lives...many stimuli that mightpotentially serving as reminders or cues, even if displayed prominently to the person, will have no effect” (p. 169). Although Mandler (1989) recognized that "most everyday memory experiences are in fact non-deliberate" (pp. 102-103), he also observed that episodic knowledge is generally "deliberate and consciously accessible, context-dependent and “memorized””. whereas semantic knowledge “is often automatically available, context-free, and ‘known’” (p. 94). Contrary to this view, it has been argued that involuntary and voluntary memories reflect the operations of the same underlying episodic memory system (Rubin, Boals, & Berntsen, 2008). From this perspective, the two types of memories differ only in the mechanisms that evoke them at a given moment, while their encoding and long-term maintenance should be supported by the same mechanisms. For example, emotion at the time of encoding should increase the likelihood of subsequent recall, whether retrieval is involuntary or voluntary. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary memories is not clear. Memory processes typically involve a mixture of the two retrieval modes. Even when a controlled inspection of our memory is launched in response to a question from an acquaintance ("What did you do when you were in Norway?" "What did you do the last evening before you returned home?" "), certain aspects of the stored episodes may be more suggestive. more easily than others, and new memory associations open up. Thus, the controlled journey through our memories can be hijacked by involuntary memories despite our attempt to stay on the same memory path. Of course, controlled search can also be guided by general knowledge of the event (e.g., that it was getting dark early; that we were with our friends) and also by abstract semantic knowledge (we know that the end of the year is at midnight, we know that snow is frequent in the Scandinavian winter, etc.). Controlled and voluntary memories typically go through an editing process to ensure they meet certain criteria such as accuracy. The review process becomes more rigorous when it is a public report. Involuntary memories, on the other hand, come to us as raw “unedited” data. Of course, some revision is likely to take place as we retell them (Jones, GV 1989). The distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory was made, in fact, by Ebbinghaus (1885). He distinguishes between memories that arise “with apparent spontaneity and without any act of will” and memories that are recalled “to consciousness by an effort of the will.” Thus, involuntary memories are those that emerge spontaneously, sometimes unexpectedly, without any intention of evoking them. Voluntary memories, on the other hand, emerge in response to a controlled, goal-directed search, usually motivated by a certain demand and guided by the need to satisfy a general criterion (Goldsmith, M. and Koriat, A. 1999). are usually associated with certain phenomenological properties: a richer preservation of the original emotional and sensory characteristics, a strong perception of the vividness of the event and a feeling of "reliving" the event. Memory sometimes has a perceptual quality (Goldsmith, M. and Koriat, A. 1999). We relive an event or episode rather than recovering its verbal content or essence. Thus, spontaneous retrieval may produce memories that more closely match the original experience. This is different from voluntary memories,, 17, 161-175.