Emotion and autobiographical memory Flashcards
describe how autobiographical memories can be organised
On a macro scale with ‘lifetime periods’ under different themes e.g Relationship theme: first girlfriend, living with x, married to y etc; Work theme: first job, working at x, working in b.
Then general events within that period i.e walk in the park with x, night at the bar with y.
Then event specific knowledge e.g how you felt when you first kissed her.
(1) the event level, which refers to individual events; (2) general events, which refer to extended sequences or repeated series of events, often sharing a common component; and (3) lifetime periods, which are broad, theme-based portions of a person’s life.
Are autobiographical memories semantic or episodic?*
*Anything starred is information from the book
Autobiographical memories go beyond the information found in episodic memory alone. They are far more constructive and integrative, often spanning multiple events. In contrast, episodic memories are each confined to a single event. In addition to episode-specific memories, autobiographical memory also contains generic information about yourself. This can include things such as your address, phone number, job, and so on.
Comment on the retrieval time of autobiographical memory*
It takes longer to retrieve an autobiographical memory than a typical episodic or semantic memory. Semantic and episodic information can be retrieved in one or two seconds. However, autobiographical memory retrievals may take two to 15 seconds. This slower processing time reflects a need to access more information and to sort through the autobiographical structure to locate specific memories.
Comment on gender differences with AB memory*
There is a tendency for women to report more episodic elements than men, to have more detailed and evaluative event reports, and to have more repetitions in their reports. In comparison, men tend to retain and place more factual information. That said, whatever information is encoded into autobiographical memory is forgotten at similar rates for men and woman
What are event models?*
Event models are mental simulations of events in a real or possible world that are grounded in a spatial-temporal framework. They also included entities that can be objects or people, including one’s self. Associated with these entities are their proprieties, such as how they look, their internal states, their goals, and so on. These events models convey structural information such as spatial position, social/kinship relations, ownership, and so on. Finally, there can be linking relations that join multiple event models into a coherent sequence of events, as with temporal or causal links between events. Event models are flexible in that people can take a variety of perspectives on events, such as the view from one’s own perspective, another person’s, or yet some other third-person view.
What can happen to event-specific memories over time ?* (2)
most event-specific memories are lost over time, others endure and become important as singular memories. This is the opposite of many memory processes, which tend to move toward making information more semantic and schematic. For an event-specific memory to be retained as a single event, it needs to have some special quality.
In what four ways can a event-specific memory become special?*
First, they can be memories of initial events that have many goal-relevant memories that follow them—for example, a memory of a childhood experience of going to the hospital for an injury sets a person on the path toward becoming a doctor. Second, they can be memories of turning points when a person’s life plan is redirected—for example, being confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident. Third, they can be memories of anchoring events that serve as a basis for a major belief system in life—for example, having a religious experience. Finally, they can be memories of anomalous events that are used to guide future behavior—for example, remembering an embarrassing incident at work when a person got caught goofing off when the temptation arises to do that again.
Describe the two different types of general event memories and what unites them*
One type of general event is a sequence of events that forms a larger episode. For example, the first day on the job is a general event composed of the various specific events of that day.
The other type of general event is a repeating event. For example, your memory for a class taken last year is a general event.
For both types of general events, there is often a personal goal that is affected by the extended event.
To what extent is this hierarchal model supported by evidence? Describe it *
This autobiographical memory hierarchy is more of a heuristic than a hard and fast categorization. However there is evidence to support this hierarchy, to some degree. For example, lifetime period reports are more likely to be elicited when people are cued to recall an auto- biographical memory in response to a cue word (e.g., tell me a memory of your life based on the word “lock”) or a social instruction (e.g., imagine you are describing the event to a friend). In comparison, event-specific reports are more likely to be elicited when people are cued when there is no specific target audience or following hearing a narrative centered on a lifetime theme (e.g., a description of someone running for high school class president). Thus, there is some flexibility in how people draw information out of autobiographical memory.
Also, over time, the lower one goes in the hierarchy, the more likely information can be forgotten, with more abstract relations in autobiographical memory being retained longer. Moreover, this hierarchy has some neurological support. People with dense amnesia can recall lifetime period and general event information but not specific episodes.
What is HSAM?
Highly superior autobiolographical memory or hyperthymesia
Describe one of the first people to be studied with this condition
Jill Price (AJ):
•Extremely good memory since 14
•Keeps a very accurate diary log
•Responds fast, knows many (correct) details
•Can recall events from a date, or give the date for an event
•Also has a lot of ‘incidental’ knowledge and context, e.g. the weather, what she ate, in which class she was, where she was sitting, etc.
•Not a good memory for poetry, abstract knowledge, etc. (not excellent at school)
What kind of memories was AJ best at remmebering?
Only autobiographical memories, strongly episodic in character I involving her and her interests- if something touched her emotionally).
What did brain imaging reveal about her?
No imaging study published about her.
Has anyone with HSAM ever undergone neuroimaging? If so, what were the results
Only in 2012 was the first brain imaging study published (not AJ), by Ally et al., who among others found a much larger amygdala in HASM subjects. Since that results have been mixed and may not be any coherent picture atm. MRI has yielded interesting but inconclusive results.
What does AJ experience day to day? Why could this be?
A constant almost ‘roll’ of memories like a split screen that she is not actively partaking in but can attend to. This could be because everything she sees is like stimuli illiciting diffierent memories in her bank.
Why does AJ claim that remembering all is not that positive?
Remembering for her is often reliving. Negative experiences, remain just as fresh and negative in her memory and don’t really ‘wear off.’ The constant flow of memories often feels distracting and stressful
How could AJ be seen as obssessive?
She has a huge log book she’s had from when she was a child where she keeps track of everything she does, could be said to be obsessed with retaining the details of her life. Unclear whether this is a causal factor or a need to externalize all the things that she remembers
Several more subjects with HSAM have now been studied. What do they have in common with AJ?
Similar results. About 75% of subjects has obsessive tendencies.
What are meant by flashbulb memories?
A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid “snapshot” of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) news was learned about.
Brown & Kulikcreated the following hypothesis for after the murder of President Kennedy, They arise with extreme emotional events and give a full and accurate memory about the circumstances. The memory is not forgotten any more
How accurate was this flashbulb hypothesis? Describe a study which researched this in 2001
This hypothesis is not correct, hence, the term ‘flashbulb memory’ is a misnomer. In one study attempting to evaluate these flashbulb memories after 911: On 12 September, 54 Duke Univ. students were asked many details: Who told you? Where were you? What were you doing? etc. The same questions were asked about another, ordinary but prominent, event specific to them. Also collected confidence measures, typically very high.
Retested after 7, 42, or 224 days in different groups. They found that the accuracy of the flashbulb memory decayed at about the same speed as a normal memory and also inconsistencies kept into the memory at about the same rate. Despite this, confidence measures revealed that people were much more confident in their flashbulb memory and rated these memories as more vivid- they felt as if they could still imagine and remember the event.
Describe an earlier, similar study regarding flashbulb memories
When the challenger rocket exploded in ‘86 researchers asked people the next day what they were doing when they heard about it then asked them about it 2 and a half years after, this is an example:
1988
“When I first heard about the explosion I was sitting in my freshman dorm room with my roommate and we were watching TV. It came on a news flash and we were both totally shocked. I was really upset and went upstairs to talk to a friend of mine and then I called my parents.”
1986
“I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about the [explosion]. I didn’t know any details except that it had exploded and the school teacher’s students had all been watching, which I thought was so sad. Then after class I went to my room and watched the TV program talking about it and I got all the details from that.”
Sometimes people were so shocked that they had to read their own writing to be convinced.
What can be concluded about flashbulb memories based on these findings?
Often severe distortions after a longer period. Conclusion: It is mostly just normal, but strong memories due to their emotional connections. But subjects strongly feel that they remember them very accurately and vividly
Name one of the first people to try to study autobiographical memory in a systematic fashion and what the goals and methods of his early studies were
Sir Francis Galton (1879) wanted to find out where most of his memories were i.e were there certain parts in his life where there were a lot of memories compared to others?
To this he used a cued method in which he would give himself cues (completely random words) and write down the memory that comes to mind. He planned to completely probe his entire memory and build a graph of times in his life in which he had a lot of memories. He basically just figured out that he had a lot of memories from recent times and not a lot from older times, riveting.
What name was given to this method and what has been later found through research using this method? (4)
The Galton-Crovitz method aims to draw a random sample of our autobiographical memories.
•Recency effect: Most recalled events are from the last two years. However, this retention function decreases rapidly
•A stable period of fewer memories
•Reminiscence bump: A period around adolescence and early adulthood (10-30 years) with relatively more memories than the periods before or after, provided that the subject was over 40.
•Childhood amnesia: People hardly remember any personal events from the first three years of their life
Describe Jaap’s study attemoting to further investigate the reasoning behind this reminiscence bump
He set up a website in which participants could log in to participate. Participants were then given a word as a cue such as nail. Participants then had to give a brief description of a memory about a specific personal event related to nail. They were given a number of these and later they were asked to date the event along with some other information.
From this they estimated a forgetting curve because they could see from the recent memories how fast they went down over time. Furthermore from this they could calculate a storage function across different ages based of 17k people who each received 10 words. The reminiscence bump was replicated from around 10-30 years old. They constructed a storage function for different age groups and found that the storage function is about the same for all age-groups, not only above age forty.
They concluded that this bump could not be explained by ‘first time’, ‘emotionality’, valence or importance of the memory because there was not a higher percentage of those memories in this group, they were neatly distributed across the distribution. Perhaps memory just works better at the time of the reminiscence bump.
What is a limitation of Jaaps research
Participants score importance etc after a long time
Also the whole paradigm is shit cough cough
What assumption does the Galton-Crovitz cueing technique make and evaluate its accuracy
the assumption is that the GC technique draws a pseudo-random sample from autobiographical memory (stratified by the cue words) and it is almost certainty wrong.
There are extremely large item effects- It is logical, even trivial to expect some effects of the cue words–E.g., ‘laptop’, ‘ipod’, ‘sms’, will only be able to evoke recent memories as they are recent concepts. Others, such as ‘armagnac’, will be acquired late
For ‘neutral’ words like ‘bowl’ or flower’, it is assumed that the random sampling effect is largely true. 64 cue words were used (we gave 10 per subject). Most words are quite ‘early’, even seemingly neutral ones like ‘kom’ (bowl), the reason there is this neat bump is that most studies only had a small number of participants and it formed a nice bump when you through everything on top of each other.
How could the Galton-Crovitz test be potentially salvaged?
If there is a common underlying lifetime distribution, we shoudl have better norms for this method in which you filter out all the item effects (individual peaks).
Can we still use this method
Maybe not… We don’t really know what it measures and there seems to be some kind of theme-related script: “Search for a memory that had ‘bowl’ or ‘flag’ as its main theme.” Does this lead to many early memories, or is there an additional bias towards childhood?
Well obviously… throw it in the bin.
Evaluate the Freudian concept of recovering suppressed memories.
Repression theory postulates (and operates under the assumptions that) that very traumatic memories are suppressed and as such they are no longer available to conscious memory: you cannot access them even if you want to which you don’t. However they may still affect behaviour.
Research with people who’ve had a very emotional traumatic childhood experience (kidnapping, shooting, severe accidents) found that:
–Little evidence of true repression (mostly just avoiding thinking about it but can if required.)
–But the attribution of the memory can change a lot
–Especially if it has not been remembered often
However, there is evidence for real amnesia for trauma that is related to sexual (including painful treatment of genitals, e.g., a catheter). If memories ‘recover’, this happens mostly spontaneously, and not necessarily in therapy
Describe Schooler, Bendiksen& Ambadar’s study which Jaap describes as the best evidence for repressed memories
found 4 cases of real recovered memories
–Recovery happened because some cues occurred
–Not necessarily in therapy
–Often accompanied by great shock and emotion
–However, memories had never been full absent (reattribution instead recovery)
–E.g. husband or friend reports: She talked about this before but did not have many emotions about it.
