Autobiographical memory Flashcards
Define autobiographical memory.
Memory for your own life - events as personally experienced.
What results are found when testing a normal student population with the cue word technique?
A traditional forgetting function (e.g. Rubin, 1982).
Describe the cue word technique.
Recalling memories associated with various cue words, dating and describing them.
How is autobiographical memory studied?
Cue word technique.
Give an example of autobiographical memory involving the cue word technique.
Galton (1883) gave people cue words and asked them to recall an associated memory, which they had to describe and date
What is a problem with studying autobiographical memory?
It’s difficult to test the validity of participants’ memories - false memories.
What is a way of avoiding the problem with memory accuracy?
Single case diary studies, such as Linton (1975) - compared time elapsed with likelihood of forgetting for different numbers of tests.
How did Linton (1975) measure her forgetting?
Having no memory of the event.
What technique did Linton use?
Random sampling with replacement - had cards with events and dates, tested herself on them.
What did Linton (1975) find?
Forgetting increases over time elapsed, but practice (multiple tests) improves memory a lot.
What did Wagenaar (1986) do?
Sampled one event a day over 4 years, more systematically than Linton.
Tried to pick more unique events, used cued recall - who, what, where and when - and randomised cue order when testing. Recalled each event once only. Also measured salience, emotional involvement and pleasantness.
What did Wagenaar (1986) find?
The more cues provided, the better memory is. Knowing when an event is is very little help for recall. Standard forgetting function - but claims items still always recognised.
Overall memory was best for recent, salient, emotional, and pleasant events.
Also good memory for unpleasant self-critical (as opposed to unpleasant neutral) events (Wagenaar, 1994) - not consistent with repression.
What do other studies than Wagenaar (1986) suggest about memory and emotion?
The intensity of the emotion is more important than its valence in predicting good memory (e.g. Talarico et al., 2004). Disagreement could be because of it being a case study - Wagenaar could be an unusual case!
What is the problem with case studies’ claims of recognition?
There’s no control in the experiment, so can’t be tested.
What did Barclay and Wellman (1986) do?
Tested roommates’ memory, with false memories from their roommate. Found that over time recognition for altered foil events increases.
What did Horselenberg et al. (2004) Suggest?
That fantasy-prone individuals may actually be better at recognising their own memories, confusing them less with false ones.
What do studies (using the cue word technique) reveal about early autobiographical memories?
Surprisingly few memories from the first few years of life, e.g. Waldfogel (1948), also Rubin (1982) showed a decrease in memory for very early memories.
What did Freud refer to as infantile amnesia?
The fact that our memories for very early events is much worse than would be expected simply from the amount of time passed.
What did Usher and Neisser (1993) do?
Asked parents and students about events - general health and other questions (birth and death of relatives can be easily dated), test memory later on.
What did Usher and Neisser (1993) find?
As predicted, fall-off of memory for events under the age of two - memory improves quite a lot 3+.
What are some problems with Usher and Neisser (1993)?
61% of memories were confirmed by a parent, but in 22% of cases parents’ and children’s memories conflicted.
What did Eacott and Crawley (1998) do?
A replication of Usher and Neisser with siblings’ birth dates. Pins down first memories at the age of 2-2yrs 3 months.
What has been found about autobiographical memory over the lifetime?
Rubin et al. (1986) (meta analysis) found that memories of 70 year olds show both childhood amnesia and evidence of a reminiscence peak - aged about 10-30 ish. Time when building up concept of self, defining who you are. Making decisions, getting jobs, making friends. Lots of first times.
What did Conway and Bekerian (1987) propose about autobiographical knowledge?
Autobiographical knowledge involves lifetime periods, general events, and event specific knowledge.
What did Burt et al. (2003) state about what an event is?
They comprise events, themes and episodes (?), and don’t exist in isolation - they’re linked with other memories to form stories.
What did Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) state about autobiographical memories?
They are transitory mental constructions within a Self-Memory System.
What is retrieval done with reference to according to Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000)’s theory of autobiographical memory?
A Working Self, which maintains our current self-concept and goals.
Where did Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) derive their idea of the working self from?
Markus and Nurius’ (1986)’s theory of possible selves.
So, according to Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000), what is a good predictor of accuracy in dating memories?
Degree of self-reference (Skowronski et al., 1991).
What problem does reliance on the working self create?
The possibility of inference and bias errors (Hyman, 1999; Schacter, 2001).
