Participants and design
We recruited 36 psychology undergraduate students at the University of Plymouth to
participate in the experiment for course credit. Ethical consent for the study was
obtained from the Faculty of Science and Technology Ethics Committee at Plymouth
University. The sample of participants consisted of 28 females and eight males, with a
mean age of 23.06 years (Participants were randomly allocated to recall memories using imagery or verbal
narration. In each condition, they recalled three autobiographical memories, rating
emotionality and recall quality after each recall trial. They then repeated the three
trials, to maximise practice at recalling with verbal or image-based processing. They
rated mood before and after the whole procedure (Graphical representation of the experiment.Emotionality and Recall thus have fixed within participant factors of Time (Block 1 and
Block 2), while Mood has a fixed within participant factor of Time (before, after).
Participants and Memory are treated as random factors. We did not have a specific
prediction about the effect of time: conceivably memories would become more vivid and
emotional as recall developed, or they might become less emotive through habituation, as
has sometimes been observed in studies with multiple recall trials (e.g., 