David C Rubin
Biographic Data
| ID | 350023 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David C Rubin |
| GIVEN NAMES | David C |
| FAMILY NAME | Rubin |
| SIGNATURE | RUBIN D C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1756-3531 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 56 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Measuring narrative identity: Rater coding versus questionnaire-based approaches
Narrative identity - how individuals narrate their lived and remembered past - is usually assessed via independent rater coding, but new methods relying on self-report have been introduced. To test the assumption that different methods assess aspects of the same underlying construct, studies measuring similar components of narrative identity with different methods are needed. However, such studies are surprisingly rare. To begin to fill this gap,…
Using shame to extend Martin Conway’s self-memory system
We extend Conway's self-memory system by adding theory and data from shame, an emotion that disrupts the internalised ideals of society needed for a positive self-concept. The event that caused 273 undergraduates their greatest amount of shame was analyzed; 66% were not very negative except for producing shame. Ratings of post-event effects, including two measure of self (self-perceived weakness, and centrality to identity) and four clinical symp…
Tonic immobility (freezing) during sexual and physical assaults produces stronger memory effects than other characteristics of the assaults
Tonic immobility (TI) is a phylogenetically conserved, passive, obligatory defense mechanism commonly engaged during sexual and physical assaults. During TI, people become immobile while remaining conscious and later reexperience intrusive memories of both their assault and of its accompanying immobility. Here we show that this well-studied biological process has powerful effects on memory and other processes. Participants had experienced either …
Narrative identity does not predict well-being when controlling for emotional valence
Narrative identity refers to a person’s internalized and evolving life story. It is a rapidly growing research field, motivated by studies showing a unique association with well-being. Here we show that this association disappears when controlling for the emotional valence of the stories told and individuals’ general experience of autobiographical memory. Participants (N = 235) wrote their life story and completed questionnaires on their general …
Autobiographical memory and the self on the psychosis continuum: Investigating their relationship with positive- and negative-like symptoms
Autobiographical memory is severely impaired in schizophrenia, but previous work has largely treated both as unitary concepts. Here, we examined how various dimensions of autobiographical memory relate to different aspects of psychosis. Participants were recruited from the general population (Study 1, N = 264) and a university subject pool (Study 2, N = 305). We examined different measures of autobiographical memory and self (i.e., involuntary me…
Are memories of sexual trauma fragmented? A post publication discussion among Richard J. McNally, Dorthe Berntsen, Chris R. Brewin and David C. Rubin
Following the publication of his article on whether memories of trauma in sexual assault victims are fragmented (McNally, 2022), McNally moderated a discussion between Chris R. Brewin and David C. Rubin/Dorthe Berntsen whose perspectives on memory fragmentation were cited by McNally. The discussion clarified their contrasting viewpoints on this controversy
Properties of autobiographical memories are reliable and stable individual differences
The ability to recall scenes is a stable individual difference: Evidence from autobiographical remembering
Neuroticism Increases PTSD Symptom Severity by Amplifying the Emotionality, Rehearsal, and Centrality of Trauma Memories
OBJECTIVE: Although it is well established that neuroticism increases the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), little is known about the mechanisms that promote PTSD in individuals with elevated levels of neuroticism. Across two studies, we examined the cognitive-affective processes through which neuroticism leads to greater PTSD symptom severity. METHOD: Community-dwelling adults with trauma histories varying widely in severity (Study 1…
Visual imagery in autobiographical memory: The role of repeated retrieval in shifting perspective
Maladaptive trauma appraisals mediate the relation between attachment anxiety and PTSD symptom severity
Our findings suggest that attachment anxiety contributes to greater PTSD symptom severity through heightened perceptions of traumatic events as central to identity and severe. (PsycINFO Database Record
Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.
An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence. It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be done from a specific location a…
The frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and future thoughts in relation to daydreaming, emotional distress, and age
We introduce a new scale, the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory (IAMI), for measuring the frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and involuntary future thoughts. Using the scale in relation to other psychometric and demographic measures provided three important, novel findings. First, the frequency of involuntary and voluntary memories and future thoughts are similarly related to general measures of emotional distress. Thi…
Changes in Neuroticism Following Trauma Exposure
Using longitudinal data, the present study examined change in midlife neuroticism following trauma exposure. Our primary analyses included 670 participants ( M age = 60.55; 65.22% male, 99.70% C aucasian) who completed the NEO P ersonality I nventory at ages 42 and 50 and reported their lifetime exposure to traumatic events approximately 10 years later. No differences in pre‐ and post‐trauma neuroticism scores were found among individuals who exp…
The relation between insecure attachment and posttraumatic stress: Early life versus adulthood traumas
The present study examined the relations between insecure attachment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among community-dwelling older adults with exposure to a broad range of traumatic events. Attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance predicted more severe symptoms of PTSD and explained unique variance in symptom severity when compared to other individual difference measures associated with an elevated risk of PTSD, including NE…
The impact of the developmental timing of trauma exposure on PTSD symptoms and psychosocial functioning among older adults
The present study examined the impact of the developmental timing of trauma exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and psychosocial functioning in a large sample of community-dwelling older adults (N = 1,995). Specifically, we investigated whether the negative consequences of exposure to traumatic events were greater for traumas experienced during childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, midlife, or older adulthood. Each of the…
Autobiographical memory for stressful events: The role of autobiographical memory in posttraumatic stress disorder
To provide the three-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, we compared (1) most-stressful memories to other memories and (2) involuntary to voluntary memories (3) in 75 community dwelling adults with and 42 without a current diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Each rated their three most-stressful, three most-positive, seven most-important and 15 word-cued autobiographical memories, and completed tests of personality an…
Remembering from any angle: The flexibility of visual perspective during retrieval
When recalling autobiographical memories, individuals often experience visual images associated with the event. These images can be constructed from two different perspectives: first person, in which the event is visualized from the viewpoint experienced at encoding, or third person, in which the event is visualized from an external vantage point. Using a novel technique to measure visual perspective, we examined where the external vantage point …
The coherence of memories for trauma: Evidence from posttraumatic stress disorder
Two versions of life: Emotionally negative and positive life events have different roles in the organization of life story and identity
Over 2,000 adults in their sixties completed the Centrality of Event Scale (CES) for the traumatic or negative event that now troubled them the most and for their most positive life event, as well as measures of current PTSD symptoms, depression, well-being, and personality. Consistent with the notion of a positivity bias in old age, the positive events were judged to be markedly more central to life story and identity than were the negative even…
I can see it both ways: First- and third-person visual perspectives at retrieval
The number of studies examining visual perspective during retrieval has recently grown. However, the way in which perspective has been conceptualized differs across studies. Some studies have suggested perspective is experienced as either a first-person or a third-person perspective, whereas others have suggested both perspectives can be experienced during a single retrieval attempt. This aspect of perspective was examined across three studies, w…
Memory in Mind and Culture
This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing both individual memory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organised around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasising…
Memory in posttraumatic stress disorder: Properties of voluntary and involuntary, traumatic and nontraumatic autobiographical memories in people with and without posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms…
One hundred fifteen undergraduates rated 15 word-cued memories and their 3 most negatively stressful, 3 most positive, and 7 most important events and completed tests of personality and depression. Eighty-nine also recorded involuntary memories online for 1 week. In the first 3-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, comparisons were made of memories of stressful events versus control events and involuntary versus voluntary memories in …
When a trauma becomes a key to identity: Enhanced integration of trauma memories predicts posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms
The Centrality of Event Scale (CES) measures the extent to which a traumatic memory forms a central component of personal identity, a turning point in the life story and a reference point for everyday inferences. In two studies, we show that the CES is positively correlated with severity of PTSD symptoms, even when controlling for measures of anxiety, depression, dissociation and self‐consciousness. The findings contradict the widespread view tha…
People over forty feel 20% younger than their age: Subjective age across the lifespan
Confidence, Not Consistency, Characterizes Flashbulb Memories
On September 12, 2001, 54 Duke students recorded their memory of first hearing about the terrorist attacks of September 11 and of a recent everyday event. They were tested again either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later. Consistency for the flashbulb and everyday memories did not differ, in both cases declining over time. However, ratings of vividness, recollection, and belief in the accuracy of memory declined only for everyday memories. Initial visceral e…
The impact of the developmental timing of trauma exposure on PTSD symptoms and psychosocial functioning among older adults
The present study examined the impact of the developmental timing of trauma exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and psychosocial functioning in a large sample of community-dwelling older adults (N = 1,995). Specifically, we investigated whether the negative consequences of exposure to traumatic events were greater for traumas experienced during childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, midlife, or older adulthood. Each of the…
Language’ and ‘Feel’ of Bilingual Memory: Mnemonic traces
How are language and emotion integrated in the mnemonic trace underlying reconstructive retrieval? Does remembering in the first versus the second language affect the feel of memories? In a protocol analysis of the kinds of information activated during memory search, Schrauf (2003) found that, as participants followed a train of associations in response to cue words, they most often evoked visual images (66%) vs. verbal (17%), feeling (13%), or c…
Production and Recognition Bias of Stylistic Sentences Using a Story Reading Task
Characteristics and constraints in ballads and their effects on memory
Four sets of ballads, chosen as a sample of an oral tradition as it existed in North Carolina in the early 1900s, were examined in order to determine whether ballad characteristics used in combination are sufficient to account for the stability observed from performance to performance, as well as across generations of oral transmission. The characteristics included verse length, presence of refrains, presence and location of poetics, the pattern …
Estimating chance reproducibility in Guttman Scaling
Applying Psychometric Methods in Linguistic Research: Some Recent Advances
Leading Questions and the Eyewitness Report of a Live and a Described Incident
Loftus found that false presuppositions included in questions given after á film increase the likelihood that those presuppositions will be remembered as part of the film itself. This finding has been extended to two conditions chosen to simulate more closely nonlaboratory situations. In one condition 27 undergraduates unexpectedly witnessed a live incident and in another condition 27 different undergraduates heard a description of that incident
Estimating chance reproducibility in Guttman Scaling
Story Recall by Mentally Retarded Children
Three stories were read to 19 mildly retarded young adolescents and to 19 nonretarded children of comparable mental age. The two groups did not differ consistently in the amount they recalled orally. Moreover, the two groups tended to recall the same parts of the stories, indicating that both groups are sensitive to the stories' structure
Autobiographical Memory
Autobiographical memory is a major form of human memory. it is the basis of most psycotherapies, an important repository of legal, historical, and literary information, and, in some views, the source of the concept of self. When it fails, it is the focus of serious complaints in many neurological disorders. This timely book brings together and integrates the best contemporary work on the cognitive psychology of autobiographical memory. Introducto…
Autobiographical memory across the lifespan
Introduction Autobiographical memory is a topic that inherently involves a lifespan approach. The development of autobiographical memory in the individual raises issues starting with childhood amnesia and progressing to reminiscence and life review. This chapter analyzes the results of studies from several different laboratories. Together, these studies cover the adult lifespan. In all cases, the data are the dates of autobiographical memories th…
Characteristics and constraints in ballads and their effects on memory
Four sets of ballads, chosen as a sample of an oral tradition as it existed in North Carolina in the early 1900s, were examined in order to determine whether ballad characteristics used in combination are sufficient to account for the stability observed from performance to performance, as well as across generations of oral transmission. The characteristics included verse length, presence of refrains, presence and location of poetics, the pattern …
Memory in oral traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-Out Rhymes
Long studied by anthropologists, historians, and linguists, oral traditions have provided a wealth of fascinating insights into unique cultural customs that span the history of humankind. In this groundbreaking work, cognitive psychologist David C. Rubin offers for the first time an accessible, comprehensive examination of what such traditions can tell us about the inner workings of human memory. Focusing in particular on their three major forms …
One hundred years of forgetting: A quantitative description of retention.
A sample of 210 published data sets were assembled that (a) plotted amount remembered versus time, (b) had 5 or more points, and (c) were smooth enough to fit at least 1 of the functions tested with a correlation coefficient of.90 or greater. Each was fit to 105 different 2-parameter functions. The best fits were to the logarithmic function, the power function, the exponential in the square root of time, and the hyperbola in the square root of ti…
Remembering our past: Studies in autobiographical memory
The recent attempt to move research in cognitive psychology out of the laboratory makes autobiographical memory appealing, because naturalistic studies can be done while maintaining empirical rigor. Many practical problems fall into the category of autobiographical memory, such as eyewitness testimony, survey research, and clinical syndromes in which there are distortions of memory. Its scope extends beyond psychology into law, medicine, sociolog…
Properties of Word Cues for Autobiographical Memory
A sample of 124 words were used to cue autobiographical memories in 120 adults varying in age from 20 to 73 years. Individual words reliably cued autobiographical memories of different ages with different speeds. For all age groups, words rated high in imagery produced older memories and faster reaction times
Properties of Word Cues for Autobiographical Memory
Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best
Emotionally charged autobiographical memories across the life span: The recall of happy, sad, traumatic and involuntary memories.
Production and Recognition Bias of Stylistic Sentences Using a Story Reading Task
Life scripts help to maintain autobiographical memories of highly positive, but not highly negative, events
Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories
Confidence, Not Consistency, Characterizes Flashbulb Memories
On September 12, 2001, 54 Duke students recorded their memory of first hearing about the terrorist attacks of September 11 and of a recent everyday event. They were tested again either 1, 6, or 32 weeks later. Consistency for the flashbulb and everyday memories did not differ, in both cases declining over time. However, ratings of vividness, recollection, and belief in the accuracy of memory declined only for everyday memories. Initial visceral e…
Emotional intensity predicts autobiographical memory experience
Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory
Language’ and ‘Feel’ of Bilingual Memory: Mnemonic traces
How are language and emotion integrated in the mnemonic trace underlying reconstructive retrieval? Does remembering in the first versus the second language affect the feel of memories? In a protocol analysis of the kinds of information activated during memory search, Schrauf (2003) found that, as participants followed a train of associations in response to cue words, they most often evoked visual images (66%) vs. verbal (17%), feeling (13%), or c…
A Tale of Three Functions: The Self–Reported Uses of Autobiographical Memory
Theories hold that autobiographical memory serves several broad functions (directive, self, and social). In the current study, items were derived from the theoretical literature to create the Thinking About Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire to empirically assess these three functions. Participants (N = 167) completed the TALE. To examine convergent validity, they also rated their overall tendency to think about and to talk about the past and …
People over forty feel 20% younger than their age: Subjective age across the lifespan
The centrality of event scale: A measure of integrating a trauma into one's identity and its relation to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms
The Basic-Systems Model of Episodic Memory
Behavior, neuropsychology, and neuroimaging suggest that episodic memories are constructed from interactions among the following basic systems: vision, audition, olfaction, other senses, spatial imagery, language, emotion, narrative, motor output, explicit memory, and search and retrieval. Each system has its own well-documented functions, neural substrates, processes, structures, and kinds of schemata. However, the systems have not been consider…
Psychology (48 works) · Cognitive psychology (33 works) · Identity, Memory, and Therapy (32 works) · Recall (26 works) · Autobiographical memory (25 works) · Memory Processes and Influences (24 works) · Developmental psychology (23 works) · Cognition (18 works) · Clinical Psychology (14 works) · Linguistics (12 works)