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Abstract
Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is a recently identified ability that has been difficult to explain with existing memory science. The present study measured HSAM participants’ and age/gender-matched controls’ on a number of behavioural measures to test three main hypotheses: imaginative absorption, emotional arousal, and sleep. HSAM participants were significantly higher than controls on the dispositions absorption and fantasy proneness. These two dispositions also were associated with a measure of HSAM ability within the hyperthymesia participants. The emotional-arousal hypothesis yielded only weak support. The sleep hypothesis was not supported in terms of quantity, but sleep quality may be a small factor worthy of further research. Other individual differences are also documented using a predominantly exploratory analysis. Speculative pathways describing how the tendencies to absorb and fantasise could lead to enhanced autobiographical memory are discussed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Aurora LePort and James McGaugh for their help identifying HSAM individuals prior to the study, and with Craig Stark, for their help with recruitment; to Steven Frenda for help with materials; to Elizabeth Loftus, Linda Levine, and JoAnn Prause for advice on the project; and to undergraduate research assistant Fellows of University of California, Irvine's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), for hundreds of hours preparing and testing technology, entering sleep logs, scheduling, emailing, Skype, calling, and running the study: Joseph McCall, Marlene Ma, Anita Chen, Alexandra Chindris, Thomas Doan, Natalie Ikker, Samuel Cretcher, Asminet Ling, Gina Machiaverna, Kenneth Nguyen, and Patricia Place.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1061011.