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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY. The “ecological movement” Neisser’s call: Cognition and Reality (1976) Memory Observed (1982) Banaji & Crowder (1989): Everyday memory is bankrupt Low generalizability? Lack of control No new “principles” “Applied” studies of memory continue to be popular

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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

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  1. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY • The “ecological movement” • Neisser’s call: • Cognition and Reality (1976) • Memory Observed (1982) • Banaji & Crowder (1989): Everyday memory is bankrupt • Low generalizability? • Lack of control • No new “principles” • “Applied” studies of memory continue to be popular • Flashbulb memories • Prospective memory • Eyewitness testimony • Traumatic amnesia • Mnemonic techniques; expertise • Autobiographical memory

  2. Memory for One’s Life Story:Content and Process • Biography and Culture • Biography as historical record • Biography as narrative • The “oral history” movement • AM as a social activity • Building and sharing our “life story” • Allende’s Paula (1995) • Socializing, bonding and constructing the “self” through recounting our story • Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1922) • The importance of cues • Ecphory of the past and present • Memory is life: Rachel the Replicant • The importance of reminiscence among the elderly • Bluck: In search of wisdom • The adaptive functions of AM: fight, flight or flirt?

  3. METHODS OF TESTINGAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY • Cuing methods • Free recall (and problem of clustering) • Cued recall • By word or phrase (Galton 1879; Crovitz 1974) • By date • By “life period” • Recognition (and issue of distractors) • How to verify memory? • Experimenters keeping diaries • Linton (75), Wagenaar (86): record events and contexts • Subjects keeping diaries • Brewer (88): random “moments” • Interviews with family members • Repeated testing of individuals

  4. STRUCTURE AND PROCESS IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY • The forgetting function for AM • Strong recency effect • Quasilinear or power function? • Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974 • Wagenaar, 1986 • Content and cuing variables • Salience and emotionality • Number and type of cuesData from Wagenaar, 1986 • Deviations from the curve • Infantile amnesia and its causes • The “reminiscence bump” 15-25 yrs

  5. Content of AM • AM as composite of episodic (spatiotemporal context) and semantic (personal and factual) information • EM as fleeting, unless “linked” to AM knowledge and context (Conway, 00) • EM (e.g., imagery) critical for cuing • Linked to or part of the “Self” and goal • Importance of self and goal hierarchy in Conway’s recent work • Largely constructive • 30% new details, 40% change in those called “distinctive”, over retest (Anderson & Conway, 94) • But also largely accurate • Constraints on errors • Rehearsal and stabilization of stories

  6. Organization of AM • Conway & Rubin’s hierarchical model • Life Periods around Themes • General Events and “minihistories” • Event-specific Knowledge and details

  7. Retrieval of AM • Retrieval as cyclic and effortful • General events the “typical” entry point via cues (cf. Rosch’s Basic Level?) • Top two levels accessed “semantically” • ESK within events accessed chronologically? • Free recall at first faster, then slower, than chronological (Anderson & Conway 93)

  8. Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974cue-word recall of AM

  9. Wagenaar 1986Diary-based cued recall of AM

  10. Wagenaar 1986AM content and access Functions are Wagenaar’s ratings at time of event, With “`1” the lowest in all cases

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