Everyday Remembering

Question 1

Whats purposeful action?

Answer 1

Neisser (1996) believed everyday memory research is based on action which:

• Is purposeful
• Has a personal quality about it, meaning it is influenced by the individual’s personality and other characteristics
• Is influenced by situational demands (E.g., the wish to impress one’s audience)

Question 2

What is episodic memory?

Answer 2

Tulving (2002) – memory for past events in our lives – the “what”, “where”, and “when”.
Is a distinctly human ability

Involves:
- The ability to travel back in time in our minds
- Coupled with awareness that we are doing so (‘autonoetic awareness’)
- A ‘self’ that can engage in this mental time travel as well as exist in the present.

Question 3

What is autobiographical memory?

Answer 3

Conway, Pleydell-Pearce, & Whitecross (2001, p. 493) argue that autobiographical memories represent a subset of episodic memories.

Specifically, they represent the episodic memories that serve the function of, “defining identity, linking personal history to public history, supporting a network of personal goals and projects across the life span, and ultimately grounding the self in experience”.

Question 4

EM and AM similarities and differences

Answer 4

EM
- Personal experiences that happened at a given time in a specific place. (Often trivial events)

AM
- Memories relating to our personal past, our experiences, and to people important to us.
- Relates to personally significant events
- Helps to define identity and support personal goals

Question 5

Whats the self memory system?

Answer 5

Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) proposed an influential model of autobiographical memory called the self-memory system.

The self-memory system consists of
(1) the autobiographical memory knowledge base
(2) the working self.

Question 6

Whats the Autobiographical Memory Knowledge Base?

Answer 6

contains personal information at three levels of specificity:

Lifetime periods
- Substantial periods of time defined by major ongoing situations.
- Thematic and temporal knowledge.

General events
- Repeated and more general events taking place within a given lifetime period.

Event-specific knowledge
- Images, feelings, and other details relating to a specific event that can be located at a particular time and place.

Question 7

Whats the working self?

Answer 7

The working self refers to a set of control processes operative at a given point in time.

According to the self-memory system, autobiographical knowledge is encoded through the goal structure of the working self, with encoded events becoming part of the autobiographical knowledge.

Likewise, at retrieval, when drawing upon this knowledge base, memories are selectively constructed out of events from the knowledge base that are relevant to the goals of the working self at the time of retrieval.

Question 8

How are autobiographical memories cued?

Answer 8

In studies looking at the distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan, researchers generally employ one of two cueing techniques:

1)The cue word method
2)The important memory method

Question 9

Whats the cue word method?

Answer 9

The participant retrieves a memory that can be associated with each cue word.

E.g., dog, car, window - I remember the day my dog ran away.

Question 10

Whats the important memory method?

Answer 10

The participant retrieves the memories that he or she feels represent the most important memories of their life.

E.g., I remember when my son was born

Question 11

Whats the lifespan distribution of autobiographical memories?

Answer 11

Word cued
- childhood amnesia
- earlier reminiscence bump
- large regency effect

Important memories
- childhood amnesia
- later reminiscence bump
- little or no regency effect

Question 12

What are the theories of childhood amnesia?

Answer 12

The social-cultural theory
The identity formation account
The cultural life script account

Question 13

Whats the social-cultural theory?

Answer 13

Fivush & Nelson (2004)
- Language and culture are both central to autobiographical memory development.
- Pre-linguistic memories are hard to express using language later.
- Children whose parents have an elaborative reminiscing style later report more and fuller childhood memories (Harley & Reese, 1999).

Elaboration
- Provides opportunities to rehearse.
- More common with mothers from Western cultures (Leichtman, Wang, & Pillemer, 2003).
- Correspondingly, individuals from Eastern cultures have a later age of first autobiographical memory (Wang, 2001).

Question 14

Whats the identity formation account?

Answer 14

Conway & Pleydell-Pearce (2000)

• Drawn from theories of lifespan development, such as Erikson’s (1950) theory.
• We already noted that, in Conway & Pleydell-Pearce’s model of autobiographical memory, autobiographical knowledge is encoded through the goal structure of the working self, and, at retrieval, memories are selectively constructed out of events that are relevant to the working self.
• According to their identity formation account of the bump, the bump can be attributed to a clustering of highly goal-relevant events occurring during adolescence and early adulthood, which not only produces a clustering of encoded memories during this period, but also leads to preferential recall of events from this period at the time of retrieval

Question 15

Whats the cultural life script account?

Answer 15

Bernsten & Rubin (2004)

Each culture possesses its own culturally shared representation of the order and timing of the major transitional events that are expected to occur in the lifespan of a typical individual.

Berntsen and Rubin (2004) first demonstrated the life script in a Danish sample by asking participants to imagine a hypothetical Dane of their own gender, and to list the 7 most important events that would most likely occur in this person’s life, as well as the age at which each event would occur.

Question 16

How does the life script produce the reminiscence bump?

Answer 16

Bernsten & Rubin (2004)

The life script acts as a cognitive schema regarding the most important events of your life, and structures retrieval of important autobiographical memories by providing search descriptions for events that are in the script.

This is similar to how, in Barlett’s (1932) illustration of the memory for the story War of the Ghosts in the last lecture, participants’ schema for a story structured their recall for the story.

The life script thereby produces the bump because life script events cluster in adolescence and early adulthood.

Question 17

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 17

Flashbulb memories refer to vivid, long-lasting autobiographical memories for the reception context in which one learned of important public events, such as 9/11.

Question 18

Who first identified flashbulb memories?

Answer 18

They were first identified by Brown & Kulik (1977), who conducted a survey probing participants’ memories for when they learned of a number of public events, such as the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X.

Brown & Kulik proposed that such events activate a special neural mechanism, which prints these memories permanently on the memory system and makes them unusually vivid, durable, and accurate.

Question 19

What was the first challenge to brown and kulik?

Answer 19

Neisser (1982) first challenged the notion of the indelible accuracy of flashbulb memories in his account of his own flashbulb memory for learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941.

He described having a vivid memory of learning of the attack while listening to a baseball game on the radio, even though he knew this memory must be false given that the attack occurred in December.

Question 20

What was the challenger study?

Answer 20

The morning after the Challenger explosion on 28th January, 1986, Neisser & Harsch (1992) surveyed students as to how they learned of it.

Neisser & Harsch then surveyed the same students again nearly 3 years later.

They found that, in the follow-up survey, over 40% of the participants’ memories were clearly inconsistent with what they had reported the morning after the attack.

Question 21

Are flashbulb memories special?

Answer 21

The morning after 9/11, Talarico & Rubin (2003) had students record their memory of hearing of the attack, as well as a recent everyday memory. The participants were also asked to rate each memory on such factors as vividness and their confidence in its accuracy

Talarico & Rubin subsequently asked the participants to record and rate each memory again up to 32 weeks later.
They found that consistency for both the everyday and flashbulb memories declined over time.

However, the ratings of factors like vividness and confidence only declined for the everyday memory, remaining stable for the flashbulb memory.

This suggests that flashbulb memories are special in terms of factors such as their vividness and the confidence with which they’re held, but not in terms of their accuracy.

Question 22

What are cultural differences in remembering?

Answer 22

According to Wang and Conway, individuals with an autonomous self-construct may be more sensitive to events unique to the self.

Individuals who focus on the more relational aspects of self may be more sensitive to events involving social interaction and collective activities.

Wang & Conway (2004, 2006) also argue that memory does not just occur in the head, rather it occurs in the context of social-cultural participation during which participants construct their life stories.

Therefore, do “culture” and “self- construct” have an impact on remembering?

Question 23

Cultural differences in remembering and working self

Answer 23

It may be helpful to think of cultural differences in remembering in light of the notion of the working self in Conway’s self-memory system of autobiographical memory cited earlier in the lecture.

According to Conway’s model, autobiographical memories are both encoded and retrieved according to the goals of the working self.

Therefore, if the working self varies across cultures, then so should the content of autobiographical memories:
- The “…motivation and goals of the working self are rooted in a culture’s belief systems, which prioritize some self goals over others. This, in turn, determines which memories and which aspects of the memories are most likely to be accessible and enduring”. (Conway & Wang, 2006, pp. 18).

Question 24

What did wang and Conway do?

Answer 24

Wang & Conway (2004) had middle-aged American and Chinese adults recall 20 autobiographical memories.

Americans provided more memories of individual experiences and focused on their own role and emotions.

Chinese participants recalled more memories of social and historical events and placed a greater emphasis on social interactions and significant others in their memory narratives.

Question 25

Whats retelling vs recalling?

Answer 25

When people recount events from their lives in everyday contexts, they often have different goals than simply describing the story accurately, and they often knowingly incorporate falsehoods into their descriptions of events.

Question 26

What did marsh and tversky do?

Answer 26

For instance, Marsh and Tversky (2004) had participants record descriptions and characteristics of retellings of personal memories over the course of one month.

Subjects recorded the purpose of each retelling, its accuracy, and the presence or absence of each of 4 types of distortions: exaggerations, minimizations, omissions, and additions

Almost 60% of retellings were intended to convey facts, 40% were intended to entertain and another 25% were to garner sympathy or express pride (retellings could have more than one purpose)

Participants labelled 42% of their retellings as inaccurate, with 61% of retellings containing at least one kind of distortion

Question 27

Whats the subsequent mnemonic consequences of biased retellings?

Answer 27

There is evidence that distorted or biased retellings shape our subsequent memory.

For instance, Marsh and Tversky (2000) had participants read a story about two roommates.

They were then asked to either:
1) Write a letter recommending the target character to a fraternity or sorority and emphasize the character’s social abilities.
2) Write a letter complaining about the target character to the university housing office, emphasizing the character’s annoying traits.

Crucially, when later asked to recall the story accurately, participants were
(1) more likely to recall things about the character that fit the aspect of the character they emphasised in the letter, and
(2) false recollections about the character were also more likely to be consistent with the perspective they took in the letter.

Question 28

Gendered parental reminiscing style and subsequent memory style

Answer 28

Fivush (1994) describes her program of research on conversational interactions between 2.5-3.5 year-old children and their parents.

Found that parents had a more elaborative reminiscing style with female offspring than with male offspring, and discussed emotions more with females as well.

Adult women have more specific memory styles than men (Pillemer et al., 2003), and are especially more likely to recall events associated with emotion (Davis, 1999).

Children learn specific narrative devices and pick up memory styles through social interactions, such as with their parents.