Abstract
Real-world memories often include our internal thoughts and feelings, yet memory research has largely centered on experimentally controlled external stimuli. As a result, it remains underexplored how such internal experiences are preserved or transformed in naturalistic autobiographical recall, and whether they serve functional roles. To address this gap, we analyzed a large-scale dataset of autobiographical narratives in which 210 crowdsourced participants recalled a specific memorable life event twice, several weeks apart, and rated their memories along multiple dimensions. We combined manual annotation with natural language processing to identify and analyze individual memory details, categorized as either observable external experiences or subjective internal experiences. We found that internal experiences were more prone to omission and semantic distortion over time compared to external ones. However, those with higher emotional intensity and stronger semantic connections to external event features were more likely to be retained. Memories richer in internal experiences were also judged as more important, and semantically precise reinstatement of internal experiences across recalls predicted increased importance over time. Together, these findings show that although memories of internal thoughts and feelings are relatively fragile, they nonetheless play a meaningful role in shaping the subjective significance of autobiographical memory.
Data availability
The original Hippocorpus dataset45 is publicly available on the Microsoft website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=105291). A preprocessed version of the subset used in the current study is publicly available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/a65bg).
Code availability
The analyses in this study were conducted using publicly available Python and R packages. For text similarity analysis, we used a pretrained model (all-mpnet-base-v2) implemented in Sentence Transformers (v2.2.0). For sentiment analysis, we used the VADER sentiment analysis tool implemented in the NLTK library (v3.8.1). We used the lme4 (v1.1-35.5) package to perform mixed-effects logistic regression, psych (v2.5.6) to compute Williams tests, cocor (v1.1.4) to obtain confidence intervals and Cohen’s q for correlation comparisons, irr (v0.84.1) to estimate Fleiss’s κ, and MBESS (v4.9.42) to compute confidence intervals for ANOVA effect sizes in R. For other statistical tests, we used Pingouin (v0.5.1), Scipy (v1.12.0), and Scikit-learn (v1.2.2) in Python. Analysis scripts are publicly available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/a65bg).
References
Levine, L. J., Lench, H. C. & Safer, M. A. Functions of remembering and misremembering emotion. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 23, 1059–1075 (2009).
Ingvar, D. H. Memory of the future’: an essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness. Hum. Neurobiol. 4, 127–136 (1985).
Conway, M. A. Memory and the self. J. Mem. Lang. 53, 594–628 (2005).
Barker, C., Elliott, R. & Pistrang, N. Research Methods in Clinical Psychology: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners. (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, England, 2016).
Stawarczyk, D., Jeunehomme, O. & D’Argembeau, A. Differential contributions of default and dorsal attention networks to remembering thoughts and external stimuli from real-life events. Cereb. Cortex 28, 4023–4035 (2018).
Fenerci, C., Adjei, B. & Sheldon, S. Remembering what we imagine: the role of event schemas in shaping how imagined autobiographical events are recalled. Learn. Mem. 31, a053993 (2024).
Fenerci, C. & Sheldon, S. The role of episodic memory in imagining autobiographical events: the influence of event expectancy and context familiarity. Memory 30, 573–590 (2022).
Szpunar, K. K., Addis, D. R. & Schacter, D. L. Memory for Emotional Simulations: Remembering a Rosy Future. Psychol. Sci. 23, 24–29 (2012).
De Brigard, F., Gessell, B., Yang, B. W., Stewart, G. & Marsh, E. J. Remembering possible times: Memory for details of past, future, and counterfactual simulations. Psychol. Conscious. Theory Res. Pract. 7, 331–339 (2020).
McLelland, V. C., Devitt, A. L., Schacter, D. L. & Addis, D. R. Making the future memorable: the phenomenology of remembered future events. Memory 23, 1255–1263 (2015).
Johnson, M. K. & Raye, C. L. Reality monitoring. Psychol. Rev. 88, 67–85 (1981).
Suengas, A. G. & Johnson, M. K. Qualitative effects of rehearsal on memories for perceived and imagined complex events. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 117, 377–389 (1988).
Morales-Torres, R., Miceli, K., Huang, S., Szpunar, K. & De Brigard, F. Episodic details are better remembered in plausible relative to implausible counterfactual simulations. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 32, 1852–1859 (2025).
van Mulukom, V., Schacter, D. L., Corballis, M. C. & Addis, D. R. The degree of disparateness of event details modulates future simulation construction, plausibility, and recall. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 69, 234–242 (2016).
Jeunehomme, O. & D’Argembeau, A. Accessibility and characteristics of memories of the future. Memory 25, 666–676 (2017).
Jeunehomme, O. & D’Argembeau, A. The role of self-reference and personal goals in the formation of memories of the future. Mem. Cogn. 49, 1119–1135 (2021).
Diamond, N. B., Abdi, H. & Levine, B. Different patterns of recollection for matched real-world and laboratory-based episodes in younger and older adults. Cognition 202, 104309 (2020).
Diamond, N. B., Armson, M. J. & Levine, B. The truth is out there: accuracy in recall of verifiable real-world events. Psychol. Sci. 31, 1544–1556 (2020).
Pooja, R., Ghosh, P. & Sreekumar, V. Towards an ecologically valid naturalistic cognitive neuroscience of memory and event cognition. Neuropsychologia 203, 108970 (2024).
Johnson, M. K., Foley, M. A., Suengas, A. G. & Raye, C. L. Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 117, 371–376 (1988).
Brewer, W. F. Memory for randomly sampled autobiographical events. in Remembering Reconsidered: Ecological and Traditional Approaches to the Study of Memory (eds Winograd, E. & Neisser, U.) 21–90 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511664014.004.
Conway, M. A., Collins, A. F., Gathercole, S. E. & Anderson, S. J. Recollections of true and false autobiographical memories. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 125, 69–95 (1996).
Finley, J. R. & Brewer, W. F. Accuracy and completeness of autobiographical memory: evidence from a wearable camera study. Memory 32, 1012–1042 (2024).
Hirst, W. et al. Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 138, 161–176 (2009).
Schmidt, S., Muzzulini, B., Levine, L. J. & Tinti, C. Sources of bias in memory for emotional reactions to Brexit: current feelings mediate the link between appraisals and memories. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 35, 819–827 (2021).
Kredlow, M. A. et al. Emotion language use in narratives of the 9/11 attacks predicts long-term memory. Emotion 24, 808–819 (2024).
Levine, L. J. et al. Remembering facts versus feelings in the wake of political events. Cogn. Emot. 35, 936–955 (2021).
Stawarczyk, D. & D’Argembeau, A. The dynamics of memory retrieval for internal mentation. Sci. Rep. 9, 1–13 (2019).
Wardell, V. & Palombo, D. J. Stability and malleability of emotional autobiographical memories. Nat. Rev. Psychol. 3, 393–406 (2024).
Wardell, V., Jameson, T., St. Jacques, P. L., Madan, C. R. & Palombo, D. J. Assessing autobiographical memory consistency: machine and human approaches. Behav. Res. Methods 57, 163 (2025).
Safer, M. A., Bonanno, G. A. & Field, N. P. ‘It was never that bad’: biased recall of grief and long-term adjustment to the death of a spouse. Memory 9, 195–203 (2001).
Castillo, J. et al. Overestimating the intensity of negative feelings in autobiographical memory: evidence from the 9/11 attack and COVID-19 pandemic. Cogn. Emot. 38, 1048–1063 (2024).
Levine, L. J. & Safer, M. A. Sources of bias in memory for emotions. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 11, 169–173 (2002).
Lee, H., Bellana, B. & Chen, J. What can narratives tell us about the neural bases of human memory? Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 32, 111–119 (2020).
Palombo, D. J. Beyond memory: the transcendence of episodic narratives. Can. J. Exp. Psychol. Rev. Can. Psychol. Exp. 78, 155–162 (2024).
Rubin, D. C. & Greenberg, D. L. The role of narrative in recollection: A view from cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. in Narrative and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology, and the Brain 53–85 (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2003). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195140057.003.0004.
Nelson, K. & Fivush, R. The development of autobiographical memory, autobiographical narratives, and autobiographical consciousness. Psychol. Rep. 123, 71–96 (2020).
Habermas, T. & Bluck, S. Getting a life: the emergence of the life story in adolescence. Psychol. Bull. 126, 748–769 (2000).
Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G. & Moscovitch, M. Aging and autobiographical memory: dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychol. Aging 17, 677–689 (2002).
Wardell, V. & Palombo, D. J. Negative emotion reduces autobiographical memory’s susceptibility to change. Emotion https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001600 (2025).
Rubin, D. C. The coherence of memories for trauma: evidence from posttraumatic stress disorder. Conscious. Cogn. 20, 857–865 (2011).
Habermas, T. & Berger, N. Retelling everyday emotional events: condensation, distancing, and closure. Cogn. Emot. 25, 206–219 (2011).
Sap, M., Horvitz, E., Choi, Y., Smith, N. A. & Pennebaker, J. Recollection versus imagination: exploring human memory and cognition via neural language models. in Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 1970–1978 (Association for Computational Linguistics, Online, 2020). https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.178.
Sap, M. et al. Quantifying the narrative flow of imagined versus autobiographical stories. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2211715119 (2022).
Sap, M., Horvitz, E., Choi, Y., Smith, N. A. & Pennebaker, J. W. Hippocorpus v3.0. Microsoft Download Center https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=105291 (2024).
Fenerci, C., Cheng, Z., Addis, D. R., Bellana, B. & Sheldon, S. Studying memory narratives with natural language processing. Trends Cogn. Sci. 29, 516–525 (2025).
Feuerriegel, S. et al. Using natural language processing to analyse text data in behavioural science. Nat. Rev. Psychol. 4, 96–111 (2025).
Holland, A. C. & Kensinger, E. A. Emotion and autobiographical memory. Phys. Life Rev. 7, 88–131 (2010).
Wardell, V. et al. How emotion influences the details recalled in autobiographical memory. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 35, 1454–1465 (2021).
Craik, F. I. M. & Tulving, E. Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 104, 268–294 (1975).
Hargreaves, I. S., Pexman, P. M., Johnson, J. S. & Zdrazilova, L. Richer concepts are better remembered: number of features effects in free recall. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6, 73 (2012).
Lee, H. & Chen, J. Predicting memory from the network structure of naturalistic events. Nat. Commun. 13, 4235 (2022).
Walker, I. & Hulme, C. Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words: Evidence for a semantic contribution to short-term serial recall. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 25, 1256–1271 (1999).
Irish, M., Lawlor, B. A., O′Mara, S. M. & Coen, R. F. Assessment of behavioural markers of autonoetic consciousness during episodic autobiographical memory retrieval: a preliminary analysis. Behav. Neurol. 19, 691925 (2008).
Thomsen, D. K. et al. A 3.5 year diary study: remembering and life story importance are predicted by different event characteristics. Conscious. Cogn. 36, 180–195 (2015).
Rubin, D. C., Schrauf, R. W. & Greenberg, D. L. Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories. Mem. Cogn. 31, 887–901 (2003).
Hirst, W. et al. A ten-year follow-up of a study of memory for the attack of September 11, 2001: flashbulb memories and memories for flashbulb events. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 144, 604–623 (2015).
Trabasso, T. & van den Broek, P. Causal thinking and the representation of narrative events. J. Mem. Lang. 24, 612–630 (1985).
Georgiou, A., Can, T., Katkov, M. & Tsodyks, M. Using large language models to study human memory for meaningful narratives. bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.03.565484 (2023).
Reimers, N. & Gurevych, I. Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1908.10084 (2019).
St. Jacques, P. L. & Levine, B. Ageing and autobiographical memory for emotional and neutral events. Memory 15, 129–144 (2007).
Hutto, C. & Gilbert, E. VADER: a parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text. Proc. Int. AAAI Conf. Web Soc. Media 8, 216–225 (2014).
Campbell, Nadel, J., Lynn, Duke, Devin, & & Ryan, L. Remembering all that and then some: recollection of autobiographical memories after a 1-year delay. Memory 19, 406–415 (2011).
Talarico, J. M., LaBar, K. S. & Rubin, D. C. Emotional intensity predicts autobiographical memory experience. Mem. Cogn. 32, 1118–1132 (2004).
Larsen, S. F. & Conway, M. A. Reconstructing dates of true and false autobiographical memories. Eur. J. Cogn. Psychol. 9, 259–272 (1997).
Robinson, M. D. & Clore, G. L. Belief and feeling: evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report. Psychol. Bull. 128, 934–960 (2002).
Zajonc, R. B. Feeling and thinking: preferences need no inferences. Am. Psychol. 35, 151–175 (1980).
LeDoux, J. E. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. (Simon and Schuster, 1996).
Kensinger, E. A. Remembering Emotional Experiences: The Contribution of Valence and Arousal. Rev. Neurosci. 15, 241–251 (2004).
McGaugh, J. L. Making lasting memories: remembering the significant. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, 10402–10407 (2013).
Yonelinas, A. P. & Ritchey, M. The slow forgetting of emotional episodic memories: an emotional binding account. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 259–267 (2015).
Howard, M. W. & Kahana, M. J. A distributed representation of temporal context. J. Math. Psychol. 46, 269–299 (2002).
Polyn, S. M., Norman, K. A. & Kahana, M. J. A context maintenance and retrieval model of organizational processes in free recall. Psychol. Rev. 116, 129–156 (2009).
Gilboa, A. & Marlatte, H. Neurobiology of schemas and schema-mediated memory. Trends Cogn. Sci. 21, 618–631 (2017).
Kensinger, E. A. & Ford, J. H. Retrieval of emotional events from memory. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 71, 251–272 (2020).
Wilson, T. D. & Gilbert, D. T. Explaining away: a model of affective adaptation. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 3, 370–386 (2008).
Buchanan, T. W. Retrieval of emotional memories. Psychol. Bull. 133, 761 (2007).
Conway, M. A. & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychol. Rev. 107, 261 (2000).
Bluck, S., Alea, N., Habermas, T. & Rubin, D. C. A TALE of three functions: the self–reported uses of autobiographical memory. Soc. Cogn. 23, 91–117 (2005).
Fivush, R., Booker, J. A. & Graci, M. E. Ongoing narrative meaning-making within events and across the life span. Imagin. Cogn. Personal. 37, 127–152 (2017).
Pillemer, D. B. Momentous events and the life story. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 5, 123–134 (2001).
Fivush, R., McDermott Sales, J. & Bohanek, J. G. Meaning making in mothers’ and children’s narratives of emotional events. Memory 16, 579–594 (2008).
Habermas, T. Emotion and Narrative: Perspectives in Autobiographical Storytelling. (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Pratt, J. G. et al. Positive affect amplifies integration within episodic memories in the laboratory and the real world. Learn. Mem. 32, a053971 (2025).
Mahr, J. B. & Csibra, G. Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory. Behav. Brain Sci. 41, e1 (2018).
Marsh, E. J. Retelling is not the same as recalling: implications for memory. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 16, 16–20 (2007).
Dudukovic, N. M., Marsh, E. J. & Tversky, B. Telling a story or telling it straight: the effects of entertaining versus accurate retellings on memory. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 18, 125–143 (2004).
Hyman, J. R. I. E. Conversational remembering: story recall with a peer versus for an experimenter. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 8, 49–66 (1994).
Booker, J. A. et al. Longitudinal changes in trauma narratives over the first year and associations with coping and mental health. J. Affect. Disord. 272, 116–124 (2020).
Boals, A. & Klein, K. Word use in emotional narratives about failed romantic relationships and subsequent mental health. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 24, 252–268 (2005).
Vanaken, L. et al. It’s all in the details: an investigation of the subcomponents of narrative coherence in relation to mental health. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 35, 1273–1283 (2021).
Acknowledgements
We thank Yoolim Hong, Alyssa McMahon, and Taylor Korn for their assistance with preprocessing the recall narrative data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
H.L. conceived and designed the research. C.K. preprocessed the data. H.S., M. Zhang, and H.L. analyzed the data. H.S., M. Zhang, C.K., and H.L. wrote the original paper. H.S., M. Zhang, M. Zhao, and H.L. reviewed and edited the paper.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Communications Psychology thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Jesse Rissman and Troby Ka-Yan Lui. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Su, H., Zhang, M., Knight, C. et al. Retention and transformation of internal experiences in autobiographical memory narratives. Commun Psychol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00425-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00425-8
