AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

1
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY

• The ecological movement
• Neissers 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 Ones Life StoryContent 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
• Allendes Paula (1995)
• Socializing, bonding and constructing the self
  through recounting our story
• Prousts 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 Conways
  recent work
• Constructive nature
• 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 Rubins 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. Roschs Basic Level?)
• Top two levels accessed semantically
• ESK within events accessed chronologically?
• Free recall at first faster, then slower, than
  chronological (Anderson Conway 93)
• The pleasures of remembering
• Photos, scrapbooks and diaries

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Crovitz Schiffman, 1974cue-word recall of AM
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Wagenaar 1986Diary-based cued recall of AM
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Wagenaar 1986AM content and access
Functions are Wagenaars ratings at time of
event, With 1 the lowest in all cases