It was emphasized that they should try to recall (or imagine) personally experienced specific event, with durations of no longer than a day. The difference between specific and generic events (Barsalou, 1988) was explained and illustrated with an emotionally neutral example (a trip to the mall). The type of response participants were expected to give was clearly stated at the beginning of the test: ‘You are to describe the situation with as much detail as possible, Vemurafenib molecular weight as

if you were (re)experiencing it: what you do and feel, the circumstances, with whom, where, and how it happens’. A printed text card of the instructions was placed on the desk in front of the participants throughout the experimental task to act as a reminder if needed. It was explained

that after each event described, they would be asked to rate Selleck Gefitinib their subjective experience associated with recalling/imagining the event. In the past and future conditions, participants were presented with cues in the following formats, respectively: ‘Try to remember an event that happened to you [specified time period]’ and ‘Try to imagine an event that might happen to you [specified time period]’. In each condition, participants were asked to try to remember/imagine events (1) one month into the past/future, (2) 5 years into the past/future, and (3) 10 years into the past/future. There were no demands as to the theme of the event representations, only that they should be clear and vivid to the participant. If the participants did not spontaneously recollect

(or imagine) an event, general prompts were provided (i.e., ‘do you remember an important event?’, ‘do you remember a special day?’ or ‘what is the most important event, that has happened within the last month?’) to give more details or to be more specific if they had click here recalled (or imagined) a generic event. After three prompting attempts, the experimenter switched to another cue-condition. Following the description of each event, participants were asked to rate the subjective experience associated with remembering/imagining the event, by responding to the following items on 7-point scales, adapted from the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (AMQ, Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003). Memories and future events representations were rated for sense of re-/pre-experiencing (i.e., while remembering/imagining the event, I feel as though I am relieving/experiencing it: 1 = not at all, 7 = as clearly as if it was happening right now) and sense of travelling in time (i.e., while remembering/imagining the event, I feel that I travel back/forward to the time when it happened/would happen: 1 = not at all, 7 = completely). Each participant was tested individually in a quiet environment. Control participants completed all tasks in one experimental session. For TBI patients, all data were obtained in 2–3 experimental sessions, completed on 2–3 consecutive days.