The recollection of remarkable autobiographical events is accompanied by judgments about the recovered event (reflexive) and about the act of recollecting itself (heuristic). This study aimed at exploring relations and distinctions between these kinds of judgments in the process of conveying personal relevance to autobiographical events. For such, 208 college students (170 women) were required to recollect a remarkable event of their lives and to fill a 16-item Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire. Based on a main components analysis, the first grouped 10 variables related to phenomenal qualities and imagery modalities. A second component comprised six variables related to reflexive judgments. The rated importance of the event was more closely related to reflexive judgments by which an individual retroactively ascribes properties to the event than to phenomenal qualities of the immediate recollection experience.
autobiographical memory; phenomenology; judgment
