Memory 8 - Autobiographical Memory

Question 1

Remembering our lives

Answer 1

• Cue word technique: safety, product, ship, time…. Recall one memory associated with each word. Describe and date the memories
• Memory for your life is known as Autobiographical memory (memory for events as personally experienced)
• When done on normal student populations you get a traditional Forgetting Function

Question 2

Accuracy in autobiographical memory

Answer 2

• A major problem with autobiographical memory studies is knowing whether to believe the reports people come up with (i.e. false memories)
• Also asking people to date memories introduces an extra source of bias
• E.g. presenting pp’s key situations that occurred in their life and getting them to time stamp/date them
• However, in some cases people have recorded what is happening for large chunks of their lives

Question 3

Wagenaar (1986)

Answer 3

• Sample approx. one event per day, over a period of 4 years and record details of the event
• Each event contains 4 cues, plus one critical detail, and is rated on three additional dimensions
• Each event recalled once only – testing takes one year
• Cued recall testing with 24 different cuing orders
• Results: standard forgetting function – but items still always recognised

Question 4

Event types in autobiographical memory

Answer 4

• Overall memory was best for recent, salient, emotional and pleasant events
• Other analyses of the original data suggest good memory for unpleasant self-critical events, not consistent with repression
• Others find intensity of emotion is more important than valence for producing good memory

Question 5

False recognition in autobiographical memory

Answer 5

Barclay & Wellman (1986):
- While people remain pretty good at recognising their own dairy entries as belonging to them, over time they become more likely to falsely accept altered foil events as their own
- Fantasy-prone individuals may actually be better in this sort of recognition task

Question 6

Everyday memories can be much worse

Answer 6

Misra et al (2018):
- But autobiographical memory studies use events that pp’s have at least decided are interesting and relevant
- If you choose random events (e.g. 3 sec video clips from a person walking around a town) you can do a precise 2AFC recognition tests for everyday events
- Minimal everyday memories: people are almost unable to distinguish videos from their own walks from videos of other people (as long as the weather conditions are similar)
- 2AFC – chance would be at 50%
- Most of our lives never make it into autobiographical memory

Question 7

Early autobiographical memories?

Answer 7

• Studies using the cue word technique reveal surprisingly few memories from the first few years of life
• Freud referred to this phenomenon as infantile amnesia
• Memories of 70 yrs. show both childhood amnesia, but also evidence for a reminiscence peak

Question 8

Childhood amnesia

Answer 8

• Cue word studies of early amnesia give you no way of specifically probing early memoires, and no way to tell if the reports are correct
• Usher & Neisser (1993) get round this problem by using parents to verify specific events that happened in childhood
• Results: negative events generally well-remembered. But only when they happened after age 3
• Problems with this study:
  1. Are the memories correct? 61% of memories were confirmed by a parent. In 22% cases the parent’s memory conflicted the child’s
  2. Are these real autobiographical memoires – could they be based ion family narratives or informed guesswork?
  3. Small number of subjects in the key cells

Question 9

Eacott & Crawley (1998)

Answer 9

• Replicate the Usher & Neisser study with an interesting control condition, and larger number of pp’s in key cells
• This study pins down first memory to between 2 yrs. and 2 yrs. 3 months approx.

Question 10

Burt, Kemp & Conway (2003)

Answer 10

• Explore people’s autobiographical memories with diary entries and photographs sorted by pp’s
• What is an event in autobiographical memory?
• The associative structure surrounding one person’s memory for an individually defined event
• Events can involve multiple specific episodes spanning multiple days and link to higher order personal themes

Question 11

Conway & Pleydell-Pearce (2000)

Answer 11

• Autobiographical memories are not simple, single episodic memories
• They can involve specific episodic memories (event specific knowledge) but are retrieved with respect to themes and periods within an individual’s life story
• Specific episodes can play multiple different roles in different roles in different autobiographical memories at different times
• Autobiographical Memories are transitory mental constructions within a Self-Memory System (SMS)
• Retrieval can be direct or generative, but all involve constructive processes
• Retrieval is done with reference to a Working Self. A concept derived from the theory of “possible selves”. The working self maintains our current self-concept and goals
• Thus, one good predictor of accuracy in dating memories is degree of self-reference
• But reliance on Working Self produces the possibility of inference and bias errors
• Autobiographical memories can change because they are generated differently when social or personal needs change

Question 12

Remembering the future?

Answer 12

• The Self-Memory System (SMS) is about more than Memory
• Autobiographical Memory is memory for our past life
• But the same SMS is intimately involved in understanding our present selves
• And in our understanding of our future selves