| dc.description.abstract | Capturing life as it is lived is an important goal in psychology, and diary methods are
commonly used for this purpose. They capture events near the time of their occurrence and
are less prone to retrospective biases associated with questionnaire, interview and survey
methods. However, participants in diary studies must remember to carry the diary with them,
and find it convenient to make entries in timely fashion. New approaches, replacing paper
diaries with technology (e.g. personal digital assistants), can overcome forgetting to make
entries and retrospective filling of data. However, until recently technology had its own
problems (e.g. unreliability and cost of devices, the need for training, biases of technical
competence, etc.). The research described in this dissertation arose from the anticipation that
the rapid, worldwide growth of smartphone ownership would overcome many of these
limitations since participant-owned smartphone diaries can eliminate associated costs and
facilitate increased rates of compliance.
Six diary studies were conducted on two transient cognitive phenomena. Initially, a
smartphone app was developed and compared with a paper diary in the study of involuntary
autobiographical memories. Although participants in the smartphone-diary condition
demonstrated significantly better compliance than those in the paper-diary condition by
reliably carrying their smartphones, and promptly completing diary entries in the app, they
recorded significantly fewer events than paper diary users. To test that this unexpected
finding was not specific to involuntary autobiographical memories, the method was tested
with everyday memory failures, and the same unexpected finding was obtained. Further
studies manipulated the length of diary-keeping period and demonstrated a diary entry rate
reduction effect with longer diary keeping periods, an effect seen in both paper- and
participant-owned smartphone-diaries. For involuntary autobiographical memories, the effect
was demonstrated by comparing 1-day and 7-day diaries, and also by using a 30-40 minutelong
digital audio recording method. With everyday memory failures, the effect was
demonstrated by comparing 7-day and 28-day diaries.
The audio recording method was used to capture involuntary autobiographical
memories while driving. It was also used on a campus walk and compared with a 1-day paper
diary within-subjects, finding a higher rate of recording in the shorter period, and consistency
of memory counts across two modes of recording. This novel audio-recording method
facilitated much more detailed analysis of involuntary memory cues and chaining and
enabled the evaluation of potential instances of priming. Finally, a telephone and postal-based
diary study of everyday memory failures demonstrated the feasibility of recruitment and
measurement of participants remotely, which can be particularly useful with older adults.
Taken together, the results of this research make a significant methodological
contribution to research on transient everyday cognitive phenomena by showing that (1) care
is needed when using participant-owned smartphone diaries, (2) paper diaries may be more
reliable than currently given credit, and (3) diary-recording periods can be substantially
reduced without compromising the quantity and the quality of data obtained. In addition,
results increase our theoretical understanding of two specific phenomena studied in this
dissertation: involuntary autobiographical memories and everyday memory failures. The
findings indicate that involuntary memories are much more frequent than previously thought,
may represent a stable characteristic of a person and, in addition to immediately present cues,
can be elicited by internal memory chaining process and more distant priming of events and
thoughts. Finally, the absence of age effects in the frequency and nature of recorded everyday
memory failures, together with significant negative age effects in laboratory tests of memory
and cognition, is a novel finding that has significant implications for research on cognitive
ageing. | en_US |
