Visual imagery in autobiographical memory: The role of repeated retrieval in shifting perspective

•Visual perspective varies greatly across autobiographical memories.•Loss of visual information leads to reconstruction from a third-person perspective.•Repeated retrieval moderates forgetting of visual information.•Repeated retrieval of visual information preserves first-person perspective.•Repeated retrieval from a third-person perspective shifts perspective. Recent memories are generally recalled from a first-person perspective whereas older memories are often recalled from a third-person perspective. We investigated how repeated retrieval affects the availability of visual information, and whether it could explain the observed shift in perspective with time. In Experiment 1, participants performed mini-events and nominated memories of recent autobiographical events in response to cue words. Next, they described their memory for each event and rated its phenomenological characteristics. Over the following three weeks, they repeatedly retrieved half of the mini-event and cue-word memories. No instructions were given about how to retrieve the memories. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to adopt either a first- or third-person perspective during retrieval. One month later, participants retrieved all of the memories and again provided phenomenology ratings. When first-person visual details from the event were repeatedly retrieved, this information was retained better and the shift in perspective was slowed.