Speaker
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to trace the contacts and places visited by those infected. This process of event reconstruction was designed to influence the transmission of the virus and relied primarily on the retrieval of personal memories of infected individuals. In our study, we investigated whether participants could provide contact tracing details and whether their memories were influenced by important events during the early stages of the pandemic. Participants had to complete an online form describing each day of the two weeks between the 27th of February 27 and the 12th of March 2020, providing as much information and detail as possible. We chose this particular period because, among other reasons, it included the day on which the Italian government became the first Western governing body to issue a decree to begin the Covid-19 lockdown. Using a linear mixed model, the results showed that participants were indeed able to report a large amount of information about people and places, and that recall was modulated by the occurrence of pandemic-related events (such as the suspension of all courses and the start of the national lockdown). We also observed a standard priority effect. Overall, our findings show how emotional salience can reshape autobiographical memory by prioritising the recall of details associated with stressful COVID-19-related events.
| If you're submitting a symposium talk, what's the symposium title? | Differenze individuali e culturali nella memoria autobiografica: nuove prospettive sperimentali e neuroscientifiche |
|---|---|
| If you're submitting a symposium, or a talk that is part of a symposium, is this a junior symposium? | No |
