AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY The “ecological movement” –Neisser’s call: Cognition and Reality (1976) Memory Observed (1982) –Banaji & Crowder (1989): Everyday memory is bankrupt Low generalizability? Lack of control No new “principles” –“Applied” studies of memory continue to be popular Flashbulb memories Prospective memory Eyewitness testimony Traumatic amnesia Mnemonic techniques; expertise Autobiographical memory
Memory for One’s Life Story: Content and Process Biography and Culture –Biography as historical record –Biography as narrative –The “oral history” movement AM as a social activity –Building and sharing our “life story” Allende’s Paula (1995) –Socializing, bonding and constructing the “self” through recounting our story Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1922) –The importance of cues –Ecphory of the past and present Memory is life: Rachel the Replicant –The importance of reminiscence among the elderly Bluck: In search of wisdom –The adaptive functions of AM: fight, flight or flirt?
METHODS OF TESTING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY Cuing methods –Free recall (and problem of clustering) –Cued recall By word or phrase (Galton 1879; Crovitz 1974) By date By “life period” –Recognition (and issue of distractors) How to verify memory? –Experimenters keeping diaries Linton (75), Wagenaar (86): record events and contexts –Subjects keeping diaries Brewer (88): random “moments” –Interviews with family members –Repeated testing of individuals
STRUCTURE AND PROCESS IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY The forgetting function for AM –Strong recency effect –Quasilinear or power function? Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974 Wagenaar, 1986 –Content and cuing variables Salience and emotionality Number and type of cues Data from Wagenaar, 1986 Data from Wagenaar, 1986 –Deviations from the curve Infantile amnesia and its causes The “reminiscence bump” yrs
Content of AM –AM as composite of episodic (spatiotemporal context) and semantic (personal and factual) information –EM as fleeting, unless “linked” to AM knowledge and context (Conway, 00) EM (e.g., imagery) critical for cuing –Linked to or part of the “Self” and goal Importance of self and goal hierarchy in Conway’s recent work –Largely constructive 30% new details, 40% change in those called “distinctive”, over retest (Anderson & Conway, 94) –But also largely accurate Constraints on errors Rehearsal and stabilization of stories
Organization of AM –Conway & Rubin’s hierarchical model Life Periods around Themes General Events and “minihistories” Event-specific Knowledge and details
Retrieval of AM –Retrieval as cyclic and effortful General events the “typical” entry point via cues (cf. Rosch’s Basic Level?) Top two levels accessed “semantically” ESK within events accessed chronologically? –Free recall at first faster, then slower, than chronological (Anderson & Conway 93)
Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974 cue-word recall of AM
Wagenaar 1986 Diary-based cued recall of AM
Wagenaar 1986 AM content and access Functions are Wagenaar’s ratings at time of event, With “`1” the lowest in all cases