Autobiographical Memory Flashcards
what is autobiographical memory?
-specific memories
-self-knowledge
-our self = life narrative
-from series of episodic memories; with semantic memory
how can we research autobiographical memory?
- previous life events
- private events
-public events
-creation of new episodic memories through lab experiments
diary studies
- wagenarr (1986) 2400 events over 6 years
-what, where, when, who
-emotion - recall to 80% of cues
- confirmed with students
- highly emotional pleasant events remembered better than less emotional and less pleasant events
Theory of Representation
- Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000
-general event memories
-event-specific memories - general event memories -> combined, cumulative memory of similar evens and extended events
the working self (conway, 2005)
autobiographical memory + goals + self-monitoring processes
-monitoring function that controls
-retrieval of info (from levels of representation)
coherence- consistency of AMs with working self
correspondence- match between retrieved memory and actual event
When do we remember from?
-childhood amnesia
-recency effect
-reminiscence bump
- 16-25 yrs
-across culture
-across cues
-pollyanna principle (Walker et al., 2003)
What is a reminiscence Bump?
- the reminiscence bump is the tendency for adults over forty to have increased or enhanced recllecion for events that occured during adolescence and early adulthood
Why a reminiscence bump?
- memory-fluency: events taking place during this time are novel and highly memorable (Conway, 2005)
- neurological views: maximal maturity for fronto-hippocampal
-sociocultural views: changes in identity formation of individual consistent with culture
Experimental methodology (Janssen et al., 2011)
- 2341 Dutch ppts (16 – 75 yrs)
- Galton-Crovitz cuing technique
- 64 cue words
- Each ppt received random selection of 10 words
- ‘Describe personal event that first came to mind by writing short
description about event. Event doesn’t have to be important but
has to be specific’ - Asked to date each event (e.g. July 2005 or 5 years ago)
- ½ ppts – how strongly did you relive the event when you thought
about it? (no reliving – as if it were happening now) - ½ ppts - how vivid was your memory of the event? (not vivid to
vivid)
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Results (Janssen et al., 2011)
- Reminscence bump peaked between 6 and 10 years
- Events from bump not given higher ratings of
reliving and vividness (on average) - Recent events were relived more and remembered
more vividly than older events - Older ppts gave higher ratings of reliving and
vividness - Suggests personal events from bump are not
recalled differently than events from other lifetime
periods, there are just more of them!
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How does emotion affect memory
- flashbulb memories: momentous events lead to memories that are more confident, but not more accurate, than ordinary memories
-if you consider your own situation, rather than details of the momentous event, memory is incredibly accurate
Is all emotion equal?
- Emotion (Kensinger & Schacter, 2006)
– Red Sox shocked the Yankees
– No difference in memory for personal event btwn
fans
– Yankee fans – more consistent over time
– Red Sox fans – more confident
Theories of FM formation
Special mechanism
▫ ‘Now, print’ Brown & Kulik (1977)
▫ FM’s subjectively strong and accurate
* Ordinary mechanism
▫ Emotionally charged and socially
significant
▫ Normal memories
▫ Errors tend to be consistent with meaning
(e.g. Talarico & Rubin, 2003)
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Retrieval of emotional memories from AM Holland & Kensinger, 2010)
- Positive events come to mind more readily than
negative events
▫ Due to ‘working self’ image?
More negative than positive when focus on other not
self
▫ Due to different encoding of positive / negative
event?
Emotional feelings alter information processing and
encoding of memory
How is content of memories
retrieved affected by emotion?
(Holland & Kensinger, 2010)
- Weapon-focus effect (Loftus et al., 1987)
- Memory narrowed onto emotional aspects of
event (e.g. Heuer & Reisberg, 2007) - AM for emotional experiences often only contain
select details (Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990) - Capture attention, integral to emotional event,
goal-relevant (Levine & Edelstein, 2009)
Extreme emotions and AM
PTSD – often involves flashbacks
* Do flashbacks represent different kind of
memory?
* Brewin (2001)
▫ Verbally accessible memory
▫ Situationally accessible memory
Harvey & Bryant (2000) – person who was in RTA
remembered details of car hit but not of accident
Involuntary Memories
- PTSD 118 Danish tourists, tsunami catastrophe
2004
▫ 50% danger to life, intense fear/horror
▫ 40% reported recurrent memories - Reappearance hypothesis (Neisser, 1967)
▫ ‘same memory image…can disappear and
reappear over and over again’ - But - No evidence for unchanging nature of such
memories
Berntsen & Rubin (2008) Results
- Telephone survey
▫ 1504 Danes (18-96)
▫ Recurrent memories
▫ Frequent, decline with
age
▫ More positive as we get
older - Diary study
▫ 9 pts completed qu’aire
▫ 8 no exact repetition
Recurrent memories in PTSD and normal
course of life have same characteristics
Memory for Emotions
- Explicit memory for emotion reconstructed
(e.g. Levine & Pizarro, 2004)
– type of event specific knowledge (Conway) - Reconstruction affected by
– individuals’ expectations (Mitchell et al., 1997)
– cultural beliefs (Feldman-Barrett et al., 1998) - retrospectively women report more emotions than
men, but not online
– individual differences (Christensen et al., 2003)
How does emotion reconstruction occur?
(Holland & Kensinger, 2010)
- Summary of feelings (Fredrickson, 2000)
▫ time of highest emotional arousal
▫ end of episode - Memory accessibility model (Robinson & Clore,
2002)
▫ past feelings cannot be stored or recalled
▫ reconstructed via semantic memory
Based on actual emotions OR semantic memory
