Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal events that come to mind spontaneously—that is, with no conscious initiation of the retrieval process. Such spontaneously arising memories were long ignored in cognitive psychology, which generally has focused on controlled and strategic forms of remembering, studied in laboratory settings. Recent evidence shows that involuntary memories of past events are highly frequent in daily life, and that they represent a context-sensitive, and associative way of recollecting past events that involves little executive control. They operate by constraints that favour recent events and events with a distinct feature overlap to the current situation, which optimizes the probability of functional relevance to the ongoing situation. In addition to adults, they are documented in young children and great apes and may be an ontogenetic and evolutionary forerunner of strategic retrieval of past events. Findings suggest that intrusive involuntary memories observed clinically after traumatic events should be viewed as a dysfunctional subclass of otherwise functional involuntary autobiographical memories. Because of their highly constrained, situation-dependent and automatic nature, involuntary autobiographical memories form a distinct category of spontaneous thought that cannot be equated with mind wandering.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.

非自愿自传体记忆是自发出现在脑海中的个人事件的记忆，也就是说，没有有意识地启动检索过程。这种自发产生的记忆长期以来在认知心理学中被忽视，认知心理学通常侧重于在实验室环境中研究的受控和策略性记忆形式。最近的证据表明，对过去事件的无意识记忆在日常生活中非常频繁，并且它们代表了一种上下文敏感的联想方式来回忆过去的事件，几乎不涉及执行控制。它们的运作受到有利于最近发生的事件和与当前情况具有明显特征重叠的事件的约束，从而优化了与当前情况功能相关的概率。除了成年人之外，在幼儿和类人猿中也有记录，它们可能是战略检索过去事件的个体发生和进化的先驱。研究结果表明，在创伤事件后临床上观察到的侵入性非自愿记忆应被视为功能失调的非自愿自传记忆的一个功能障碍子类。由于其高度受限、依赖情境和自动的性质，无意识的自传体记忆形成了一种独特的自发思维类别，不能等同于走神。

本文是主题“离线感知：不匹配外部刺激的自愿和自发的感知体验”的一部分。