Theories of autobiographical memory distinguish between involuntary and voluntary memories. While involuntary memories are retrieved with no conscious intention and are therefore unexpected, voluntary memories are both intended and expected. Recent research has shown that participants sometimes classify their memories as either involuntary or voluntary based on retrieval effort instead of intention. These findings question whether intention really is the defining difference between these two types of retrieval or whether retrieval effort is also an important determinant. In two experimental studies, we investigated the extent to which participants rely on retrieval effort while classifying their memories as involuntary or voluntary. We created experimental conditions that maximize the probability of one type of retrieval while minimizing the probability of another type. Participants reported autobiographical memories in each condition while the programme registered their retrieval time. They then classified their memories as either voluntary or involuntary and rated all memories on perceived retrieval effort. This gave us four categories of memories: experimentally defined voluntary and involuntary memories with an objective measure of effort (retrieval time) and subjectively classified involuntary and voluntary memories with a subjective measure of effort. This allowed us to investigate the relative contribution of intention and effort to involuntary and voluntary memories. We replicated and extended previous findings by showing that the majority of memories were classified as involuntary independently of whether they were retrieved in the experimentally defined voluntary or involuntary condition. This could indicate that subjective effort is more important than intention for the involuntary–voluntary distinction in contrast with existing theories. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of this finding.

中文翻译：

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检索努力或意图：对于参与者对非自愿和自愿记忆的分类哪个更重要？

自传体记忆理论区分非自愿和自愿记忆。虽然不自觉的记忆是在没有意识的情况下被检索出来的，因此是出乎意料的，但自愿的记忆既是有意的，也是预期的。最近的研究表明，参与者有时根据检索努力而不是意图将他们的记忆分类为非自愿或自愿的。这些发现质疑意图是否真的是这两种检索类型之间的决定性差异，或者检索努力是否也是一个重要的决定因素。在两项实验研究中，我们调查了参与者在将他们的记忆分类为非自愿或自愿的同时依赖检索努力的程度。我们创造了最大化一种检索概率同时最小化另一种检索概率的实验条件。参与者报告了每种情况下的自传体记忆，而程序则记录了他们的检索时间。然后他们将他们的记忆分类为自愿或非自愿的，并根据感知的检索努力对所有记忆进行评分。这给了我们四类记忆：实验定义的自愿和非自愿记忆，具有客观的努力措施（检索时间），以及主观分类的非自愿和自愿记忆，具有主观的努力措施。这使我们能够调查意图和努力对非自愿和自愿记忆的相对贡献。我们通过显示大多数记忆被归类为非自愿的，而不管它们是在实验定义的自愿还是非自愿条件下检索，我们复制和扩展了以前的发现。这可能表明，与现有理论相比，主观努力比非自愿-自愿区分的意图更重要。我们讨论了这一发现的理论和方法学意义。