Autobiographical memory

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Lecture 717-12-2007

• Autobiographical memory

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Plan

• Characteristics
• Levels
• Autobiographical memory as life narrative
• Infantile amnesia
• Reminiscence bump
• Flashbulb memories

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What autobiographical memory is?

• It stores events and facts directly connected to
  the self
• It directs our behavior with the aid of knowledge
  about our own past
• But this concept does not describe neither any
  specific store, nor any specific mechanism
• First it was presented in philosophy Bergson
  proposed a memory for personal events and habits

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History

• First studies conducted by Galton and Freud
• Galton interested in the taxonomy of memories
  and the causes of the diversity of memories
  studies conducted with verbal cues
• Freud interested by the causal relations between
  the past and the present retrieving life history
  as an element of psychotherapy

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Functions of autobiographical memory

• Intrapersonal construction and storage of self-
  related data and own history mood regulation and
  maintenance of emotional balance
• Interpersonal engaging in relations with others
  and sustaining relations with other people
  autopresentation
• Generation of present and future behaviors on the
  basis of personal experience

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Methods of study

• The breakfast questionnaire and other verbal
  methods using verbal associations
• Researchers as own subjects M. Linton, R.T.
  White, W.A. Wagenaar describing everyday events
  from ones own life together with cues
• Interviews
• Experiments, for example implanting false memories

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Characteristics episodic or semantic?

• Autobiographical memory is a permanent, long-term
  memory, a part of declarative memory
• Identified by some researchers with episodic
  memory, others hold the opinion that it goes
  beyond
• because it is more constructive and integrative
  and includes a generalized knowledge about ones
  past, behaviors, emotions, attitudes
• The recording of personal experiences and their
  meaning
• Generic information about oneself

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Retrieval general remarks

• Usually retrieval starts with more general
  information followed by specific one
• Very often an inferential process
• Longer time needed to retrieve autobiographical
  memories, as compared with episodic and semantic
• Some information is always easily accessed, like
  generic one

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M. Lintons hierarchical model of
autobiographical memory

• The highest level of storage mood
• Themes and sub-themes of memories
• Elaborations of themes and sub-themes
• Events, episodes, and amalgamates
• Elements of events and episodes
• Details

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Levels of autobiographical memory

• Conway three levels
• The event level, which refers to specific,
  individual events
• General events level, which refers to extended
  sequences or repeated series of events, often
  sharing a common component
• Lifetime periods, broad, theme-based portions of
  a persons life

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Hierarchy of autobiographical memories
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Events-specific memories

• The most basic level
• Corresponds to episodic memories
• Memories for specific, continuous periods of time
• Contain many perceptual and contextual details
• Most event-specific memories are lost over time
• Some become singular, unique, when they concern
  originating events, turning points, anchoring
  events or are important as guide of behavior in
  the future

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General-event memories

• A sequence of specific events that form a larger
  episode, egg, first day in a new school
• Repeating events
• Requires integration and interpretation

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Lifetime period memories

• The highest level of the hierarchy
• Long periods organized along a common theme, like
  childhood, primary school, high school, studies,
  professional career...
• Often memories are retrieved in the frames of
  lifetime periods and confined to a specific theme

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The recursive process of breaking down an
autobiographical memory into smaller parts
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Temporal overlapping of various lifetime periods
with different themes
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Autobiographical memory as life narrative

• A general human tendency to organize experiences
  into a narrative structure
• People are able to access autobiographical
  memories on the basis of such components as
  people, places, activities, or perceptual cues
  (pictures, sounds, odors, tastes...)
• The retrieval of one memory often triggers
  related memories by causal relations or
  similarity
• Usually recall of events proceeds in a forward
  order (re-living) than in a backward one

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Perspectives in autobiographical memory

• Field memories experiencing a memory from the
  original perspective
• Observer memories viewing the situation from
  outside
• Older memories are more likely to be observers
  memories
• More emotional memories are more likely to be
  field memories
• The more self-aware is a person, the more likely
  is an observer memory

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Infantile amnesia

• Autobiographical memory has a classical
  forgetting curve with two exceptions infantile
  amnesia and the reminiscence bump
• The limits of infantile amnesia and factors
  influencing then
• Gender
• Intelligence
• Verbal abilities
• Cultural factors
• Position of the child in the family

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Infantile amnesia remembering the birth of a
sibling
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Infantile amnesia theoretical explanations

• The neuropsychological hypothesis amnesia is
  the result of the brain immaturity, early
  experiences are not registered (hippocampus and
  frontal lobe late development) or they traces are
  not permanent
• The psychodynamic hypothesis early memories are
  repressed
• The cognitive view ways of coding and
  retrieving vary personal memories may appear
  only once the self concept has emerged

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Reminiscence bump

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Reminiscence bump
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Reminiscence bump - explanations

• Cognitive account
• primacy effect (many first times)
• transition points
• more positive events
• Neurological account the time of the best
  cognitive functioning
• Identity formation view

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Retrieval of memories differing in emotional value

• More positive as compared with negative or
  neutral memories are retrieved
• With time the emotional strengths of memories
  fades especially true for negative events
• The past is improved in autobiographical memory
  
• Exception people with depression

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Intensity of the affect linked with memories
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Flashbulb memories

• Highly detailed memories for surprising events
• First description in 1899 by Colgrove memory of
  the circumstances of learning about Lincolns
  death
• Brown and Kulik (1977) memory of the
  circumstances of learning about John F. Kennedys
  assassination
• Canonic categories information about the place
  accompanying events source of information
  consequences of the event felt emotions

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Flashbulb memories cont.

• Are they really accurate?
• Neissers and Harsch (1992) study on memories
  concerning learning about the explosion of the
  space shuttle Challenger, after 24 hours, 2 years
  and a half and after 3 years in the last test 7
  retrieval accuracy, 25 absolutely false
• But in general people are persuaded that their
  memories are very accurate, vivid and authentic

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Major factors in the creation of flashbulb
memories
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Flashbulb memories from different periods of life