Psychological research into spontaneous or intrusive cognitions has typically focused on cognitions in one predefined domain, such as obsessional thoughts in OCD, intrusive memories in posttraumatic stress disorder and depression, or involuntary autobiographical memories and daydreaming in everyday life. Such studies have resulted in a wealth of knowledge about these specific cognitions. Howeve...

Sometimes when we unintentionally or intentionally retrieve a memory of a past episode, we experience one or more additional memories, which spring to mind quickly and uncontrollably. For example, one might involuntarily remember seeing mummies in the British Museum, and this memory could in turn trigger a memory of seeing the Egyptian collection at the natural history museum in New York City. ...

Hereditary chin trembling is a rare autosomal dominant disease often considered as an "essential tremor variant". The clinical and neurophysiological data obtained in a new white family lead to the suggestion that this abnormal involuntary movement is a focal variant of hereditary essential myoclonus.

Involuntary episodic memories come to mind spontaneously--that is, with no preceding retrieval attempts. Such memories are frequent in daily life, in which they are predominantly positive and often triggered by situational features matching distinctive parts of the memory. However, individuals suffering from psychological disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, have stressful, repetit...

Research on aging and autobiographical memory has focused almost exclusively on voluntary autobiographical memory. However, in everyday life, autobiographical memories often come to mind spontaneously without deliberate attempt to retrieve anything. In the present study, diary and word-cue methods were used to compare the involuntary and voluntary memories of 44 young and 38 older adults. The r...

Involuntary movements share much of the motor control circuitry used for voluntary movement, yet the two can be easily distinguished. The Kohnstamm phenomenon (where a sustained, hard push produces subsequent involuntary arm raising) is a useful experimental model for exploring differences between voluntary and involuntary movement. Both central and peripheral accounts have been proposed, but l...

It is well established that involuntary attention—the exogenous capture of attention by salient but task-irrelevant stimuli—can strongly modulate target detection and discrimination performance. There is an ongoing debate, however, about how involuntary attention affects target performance. Some studies suggest that it results from enhanced perception of the target, whereas others indicate inst...

The study of memories that pop into one's mind without any conscious attempt to retrieve them began only recently. While there are some studies on involuntary autobiographical memories (e.g., ) research on involuntary semantic memories or mind-popping is virtually non-existent. The latter is defined as an involuntary conscious occurrence of brief items of one's network of semantic knowledge. Th...

Using nationally representative household survey data from 1995 to 2006, this paper explores heterogeneity among female part-time wage (salaried) workers in post-apartheid South Africa, specifically distinguishing between individuals who choose to work parttime and part-time workers who report wanting to work longer hours. As in studies of voluntary and involuntary part-time employment in other...

Results The proportion of urgent involuntary hospitalizations (Article 23) decreased in that period from 9.5 to 7.5% of the total number of admissions in mental hospitals, and from 8.5 to 6.5% in psychiatric wards of general hospitals. The ratio of involuntary admissions for psychiatric observation (Article 24) increased from 0.85 to 1.6% in mental hospitals, and in psychiatric wards from 0.8 t...