Researcher:
Ergen, İrem

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İrem

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Ergen

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Ergen, İrem

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2022 - 20245

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    The flashbulb-like nature of memory for the first Covid-19 case and the impact of the emergency. A cross-national survey
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2024) Lanciano, Tiziana; Alfeo, Federica; Curci, Antonietta; Marin, Claudia; D'Uggento, Angela Maria; Decarolis, Diletta; Oner, Sezin; Anthony, Kristine; Barzykowski, Krystian; Bascon, Miguel; Benavides, Alec; Cabildo, Anne; de la Mata-Benitez, Manuel Luis; Filip, Katarzyna; Gofman, Alena; Janssen, Steve M. J.; Kai-bin, Zhao; Markostamou, Ioanna; Matias-Garcia, Jose Antonio; Nourkova, Veronika; Oleksiak, Sebastian; Santamaria, Andres; Szpunar, Karl; Taylor, Andrea; Watson, Lynn Ann; Zheng, Jin; Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Ergen, İrem; College of Social Sciences and Humanities
    Flashbulb memories (FBMs) refer to vivid and long-lasting autobiographical memories for the circumstances in which people learned of a shocking and consequential public event. A cross-national study across eleven countries aimed to investigate FBM formation following the first Covid-19 case news in each country and test the effect of pandemic-related variables on FBM. Participants had detailed memories of the date and others present when they heard the news, and had partially detailed memories of the place, activity, and news source. China had the highest FBM specificity. All countries considered the Covid-19 emergency as highly significant at both the individual and global level. The Classification and Regression Tree Analysis revealed that FBM specificity might be influenced by participants' age, subjective severity (assessment of Covid-19 impact in each country and relative to others), residing in an area with stringent Covid-19 protection measures, and expecting the pandemic effects. Hierarchical regression models demonstrated that age and subjective severity negatively predicted FBM specificity, whereas sex, pandemic impact expectedness, and rehearsal showed positive associations in the total sample. Subjective severity negatively affected FBM specificity in Turkey, whereas pandemic impact expectedness positively influenced FBM specificity in China and negatively in Denmark.
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    The functions of remembering the past and imagining the future during the Covid-19 pandemic
    (Wiley, 2024) Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Adıgüzel, Zeynep; Ay, Demet; Bilgin, Ezgi Büşra; Coşkuner, Selin Buse; Ergen, İrem; Gülgöz, Sami; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Social Sciences and Humanities
    In this study, we explored how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the functions of autobiographical memory and future projection over time. Between May and June 2020, we asked people (N = 286) to recall or imagine personal events from four time periods: past before the pandemic, past during the pandemic, future during the pandemic, and future after the pandemic ends. Participants rated self, social, directive, predictive, and emotion regulation functions, and the phenomenological characteristics of these events. We found that ratings for all functions decreased for the pandemic and increased for the future. Overall, this study revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic created a breaking point, with memories being less functional at the beginning of the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic times and the future. However, imagined events that would occur after the pandemic ended were rated most functional, suggesting that people were still optimistic about a pandemic-free future.
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    Emotional closure in autobiographical memories: phenomenology and involuntary remembering
    (Routledge, 2023) Department of Psychology; N/A; Department of Psychology; Gülgöz, Sami; Ergen, İrem; Faculty Member; Teaching Faculty; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 49200; N/A
    Open autobiographical memories are events without closure. The current study explored the influence of potential closure in the future. We compared the phenomenology and involuntary recall for events that were either closed, open with a possibility of closure, or open without such a possibility. Participants (N = 87) recalled these events in random order and answered phenomenology questions. We expected open events without closure possibility to be highest in negativity, emotional intensity, regret and involuntary recall frequency, followed by potentially open events and closed events. We found that emotional intensity at recall, negativity and involuntary recall frequency were higher for open than closed events. Open events without closure possibility were the highest in regret and evoked more negative affect upon involuntary recall than open events with closure possibility. We discussed our findings in relation to research on autobiographical memory and involuntary remembering, along with intrusion and possible clinical implications. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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    Spontaneous past and future thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic across 14 countries: effects of individual and country-level COVID-19 impact indicators
    (American Physiological Society (APS), 2022) Cole, Scott N.; Markostamou, Ioanna; Watson, Lynn Ann; Barzykowski, Krystian; Taylor, Andrea; Oner, Sezin; Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Ergen, İrem; Teaching Faculty; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A
    In 2020, the world was amid a global health crisis-the COVID-19 pandemic. Nations had varying levels of morbidity and mortality and adopted different measures to prevent the spread of infection. Effects of the pandemic on spontaneous (rather than voluntary) past and future thoughts remain unexplored. Here, we report data from a multicountry online study examining how both country- and individual-level factors are associated with this core aspect of human cognition. Results showed that national (stringency of measures) and individual (attention to COVID-related information and worry) factors separately and jointly predicted the frequency of people's pandemic-related spontaneous thoughts. Additionally, no typical positivity biases were found, as both past and future spontaneous thoughts had a negative emotional valence. This large-scale multinational study provides novel insights toward better understanding the emergence and qualities of spontaneous past and future thoughts. Findings are discussed in terms of the determinants and functions of spontaneous thought. General Audience Summary The COVID-19 pandemic was a global phenomenon; people in countries across the world experienced the pandemic similarly, but did it affect the way we perceived the past and future? This study reports whether and how people experienced spontaneous thoughts about the past and future of the pandemic-that is, images of the past or future that appear in mind without warning and with little effort (e.g., remembering a recent lockdown or imagining a future announcement)-during the pandemic's first wave. Spontaneous past and future thoughts are important in daily life and can indicate poor mental health when negative in nature. Here, for the first time, we asked people from 14 different countries across four continents to report the frequency and emotional characteristics of their spontaneous past and future pandemic-related thoughts in the first wave of the pandemic. The study showed that the national context (in particular, COVID regulations) predicted the frequency of people's spontaneous thoughts about the pandemic. Emotional aspects of these thoughts were predicted by individual factors such as isolation, worry, attention to COVID-related information, and impact of COVID-19 on everyday life, in addition to national factors. Finally, in contrast to previous research showing a "positive bias," which is thought to be beneficial, past and future spontaneous pandemic-related thoughts had a negative emotional tone. This study allowed us to demonstrate that the tendency to experience spontaneous thoughts about an ongoing international event can be predicted by societal context, which may be valuable for examining the social predictors of spontaneous emotional thoughts about the past and future. The study also characterized the negative tone of past and future spontaneous thoughts about the pandemic, and future studies will be needed to examine the longer term consequences of these effects.
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    Mood regulation upon remembering open memories
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd) Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Ergen, İrem; Gülgöz, Sami; Teaching Faculty; Faculty Member; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; 49200
    Open autobiographical memories are personal life experiences on which an individual does not have closure. It is unknown whether emotion regulation strategies through recalling positive memories are active after recalling open memories. The current study aims to explore the presence of emotion regulation for open memories while testing for the interference of depressive tendencies. The participants were asked to remember an open memory and answer questions on phenomenological features of this event. Later, they recalled a memory without any restrictions and answered similar phenomenological questions. The results showed that the subsequent memories were significantly more closed, more positive, and less intense during retrieval than open memories. Additionally, open memories were reported as involuntarily rehearsed more frequently than the subsequent memories. Depressive tendencies were unrelated to emotion regulation after open memory recall. This study provides insight into the emotion regulation strategies after remembering open memories and how depression could be related to this strategy.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries
    (Springer, 2022) Öner, Sezin; Watson, Lynn Ann; Curci, Antonietta; Cole, Scott; de la Mata, Manuel L.; Janssen, Steve M. J.; Lanciano, Tiziana; Markostamou, Ioanna; Nourkova, Veronika; Santamaria, Andres; Taylor, Andrea; Barzykowski, Krystian; Bascon, Miguel; Bermeitinger, Christina; Cubero-Perez, Rosario; Dessenberger, Steven; Garry, Maryanne; Hacklander, Ryan; Heux, Lucrece; Jin, Zheng; Lojo, Maria; Matias-Garcia, Jose Antonio; Roediger, Henry L., III; Szpunar, Karl; Tekin, Eylül; Uner, Öykü; Department of Psychology; Department of Psychology; Adıgüzel, Zeynep; Ergen, İrem; Bilgin, Ezgi Büşra; Gülgöz, Sami; Teaching Faculty; Faculty Member; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; N/A; N/A; 49200
    The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.