Autobiographical Memory (AM)
Memory for specific experiences from our life
- Mental time travel - Multidimensional- spatial, emotional, and sensory components
*We remember some events in our live better than others
Linton’s Diary Study
Wrote 2 most important things of day for 6 years
Waganaar’s Beeper Study
Assistant randomly beeped him and he had to write down everything about what he was doing in moment
Rubin’s VLTM
Very long-term memory
-Recall cues increased response, but decreased primary effect
Cabeza and coworkers (2004)
*Medial temporal lobe- episodic memory
Reminiscence Bump
Empirical finding that people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their life
Explanations for the reminiscence bump
Self-image hypothesis
Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed
- Period of assuming person’s self-image
Cognitive hypothesis
Encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability
Cultural Life Script
Life events that commonly occur in particular culture
- Personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Distinguishes between person’s life story and cultural life script
Youth Bias
Tendency for most notable public event in a person’s life to be perceived to occur when person is young
“Fragile Power”
Transience
Decreased accessibility of information over time
Absent-Mindedness
Inattentiveness leading to shallow processing and weak memory formation due to lack of attention to the task at hand
Blocking
Information that has been stored in your memory is not accessible at that moment in time
Misattribution
Matching the incorrect source to a recollection or an idea
Suggestibility
Memories that come from leading questions or ideas as a results of trying to recall a specific experience
Bias
Retrospective changes to past memories due to current beliefs that affect the memory itself even though it had little impact when the memory originally occurred
Persistence
Memories that we can’t get rid of even if we try to
Neisser and Harsch (1992)
Repeated recall
- Initial description: baseline
Results suggest that these memories can be inaccurate or lacking in detail
Emotional Events
Flashbulb Memories
Repeated Recall
Recall is tested immediately after an events and then retested at various times after event