Mediated autobiographical remembering in the digital age: insights from an experimental think-aloud study

Autobiographical remembering may undergo significant transformations in the digital age, in which the omnipresence of digital tools has led to an increased density of recorded life episodes. To gain deeper insights into these processes, we conducted an experimental think-aloud study in which participants (N = 41) had to remember an important day and a random day that happened about one year ago. As the results demonstrate, participants repeatedly switched between information stored in their minds and information stored in external resources when remembering these events, with digital resources playing a particularly prominent role. The number of changes between internal memories and external resources as well as the number of digital resources that individuals used were higher when remembering the random day. In sum, this suggests that the iterative combination of information stored in one's mind and information stored in external resources can be considered a potentially symbiotic process.