Autobiographical memory

Question 1

What is the autobiographical memory?

Answer 1

Defines identity, personal history , personal goals and projects

Question 2

What are the two categories of the autobiographical memory?

Answer 2

Specific and categoric

Question 3

How is autobiographical memory different to episodic?

Answer 3

• Personal significance
• Timeline (usually longer)
• Database
• Different brain area activation (Bunanova 2010)

Question 4

What is infantile amnesia and what is it believed to be caused by?

Answer 4

Absence of memory in the first 3 years of life, believed to be due to hippocampal development

Question 5

What did Howe, Courage and Edison find?

Answer 5

That self-recognising infants had a better memory for personal events

Question 6

What is the socio-cultural development theory?

Answer 6

Idea that language skills influence retrieval of events e.g the words they knew at the time (Firvush & Nelson 2004) and mothers retrieval style (Harley & Reese 1999)

Question 7

What is hyperthymestic syndrome?

Answer 7

Ability to recall detailed information about almost everyday of one’s life for a long time period

Question 8

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 8

Autobiographical memories for important, dramatic and unique public events which activates a special neural mechanism encoding for the stails of the event in the memory system

Question 9

What did Cubelli and Rubin (2008) find?

Answer 9

That flashbulb memories where more vivid over time but did not show greater consistency

Question 10

What is the self-memory system?

Answer 10

• Developed by Conway and Pleydell-Pearce 2000 to describe how autobiographical memories are retrieved
• Contains the autobiographical memory knowledge base and the working self

Question 11

What is the ‘working self’?

Answer 11

self & individuals goals

Question 12

What is the difference between direct retrieval and generative retrieval?

Answer 12

direct retrieval - Spontaneous access to memories
generative retrieval - Combining information contained within the working self with the information from the autobiographical knowledge base, generally more effortful

Question 13

What are the 3 timescales encoded in the autobiographical knowledge base?

Answer 13

Lifetime periods - significant periods of time and themes
General events - repeated and single events
Event-specific knowledge - images, details and feelings related to specific events and also the temporal order of an event

Question 14

What is the evidence for the self-memory system?

Answer 14

• Brain damaged patients show evidence for 3 types of autobiographical knowledge
• Real autobiographical events are associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex

Question 15

What brain areas are associated with the following processes of memory retireval?

1. generative
2. self-referential
3. Recollection
4. Emotional processing
5. Visual imagery
6. Preconscious check of memory accuracy

Answer 15

1. lateral prefrontal cortex
2. medial prefrontal cortex
3. hippocampus and medial temporal lobes
4. amygdala
5. occipatal lobes, cuneus and precuneus
6. ventrolateral prefrontal cortex