The relation between verbal and visuospatial memory and autobiographical memory

The basic-systems approach (Rubin, 2005, 2006) states that autobiographical memory is supported by other cognitive systems and argues that autobiographical memories are constructed from interactions between cognitive systems, such as language, vision and emotion. Although deficiencies in one or more of the basic systems influence the properties of autobiographical memories, little is known about how these cognitive abilities and autobiographical memory are related. To assert whether participants with stronger cognitive abilities also perform better on autobiographical memory tests, participants who completed verbal and visuospatial memory tests also recorded one personal event, which they recalled after a certain interval. Participants who performed well on the verbal memory tests also had better retention for the personal event, providing support for the basic-systems approach to autobiographical memory and preliminary support for the view that people have more memories from adolescence and early adulthood because the memory system works optimally in these lifetime periods.     

Remembering,imagining, false memories & personal meanings

The Self-Memory System encompasses the working self, autobiographical memory and episodic memory. Specific autobiographical memories are patterns of activation over knowledge structures in autobiographical and episodic memory brought about by the activating effect of cues. The working self can elaborate cues based on the knowledge they initially activate and so control the construction of memories of the past and the future. It is proposed that such construction takes place in the remembering–imagining system – a window of highly accessible recent memories and simulations of near future events. How this malfunctions in various disorders is considered as are the implication of what we term the modern view of human memory for notions of memory accuracy. We show how all memories are to some degree false and that the main role of memories lies in generating personal meanings.     

Continuity of phenomenology and (in)consistency of content of meaningful autobiographical memories

Phenomenology is a critical component of autobiographical memory retrieval; it reflects both (a) memory-specific features and (b) stable individual differences. Few studies have tested phenomenology longitudinally. The present work examined the continuity of memory phenomenology in a sample of Italians adults (N = 105) over a 4-week period. Participants retrieved two ‘key’ personal memories, a Turning Point and an Early Childhood Memory, rated the phenomenology of each memory, and completed measures of personality, psychological distress and subjective well-being. Phenomenological ratings were moderately stable over time (median correlation >.40), regardless of memory content. Personality traits, psychological distress and well-being were associated with phenomenology cross-sectionally and with changes in phenomenology over time. These results suggest that how individuals re-experience their most important personal memories is relatively consistent over time and shaped by both trait and state aspects of psychological functioning.     

The role of working memory capacity in autobiographical retrieval: Individual differences in strategic search

Remembering previous experiences from one's personal past is a principal component of psychological well-being, personality, sense of self, decision making, and planning for the future. In the current study the ability to search for autobiographical information in memory was examined by having college students recall their Facebook friends. Individual differences in working memory capacity manifested itself in the search of autobiographical memory by way of the total number of friends remembered, the number of clusters of friends, size of clusters, and the speed with which participants could output their friends' names. Although working memory capacity was related to the ability to search autobiographical memory, participants did not differ in the manner in which they approached the search and used contextual cues to help query their memories. These results corroborate recent theorising, which suggests that working memory is a necessary component of self-generating contextual cues to strategically search memory for autobiographical information.     

The Effects of Social Roles and Personality Motives on Autobiographical Memory

In the present study we examined how agentic and communal social roles and personality motives were related to the quality (including emotions and agentic and communal themes) and cognitive structure (differentiation and integration) of women's autobiographical memories. One hundred twenty-seven college-aged women were asked to describe a personal memory after being randomly assigned to either agentic or communal task conditions. In the agentic task condition, participants completed a creative building task alone, and in the communal task condition, participants completed the same task with a confederate. Personality motives were measured by both explicit (self-report) and implicit (TAT stories) measures. Following the task, participants wrote about an autobiographical experience in which they were in either agentic or communal social roles. Linear multiple regression analyses indicated that participating in an agentic task, as compared to a communal task, was related to the inclusion of fewer agentic themes as well as to a higher frequency of shame and anger words in autobiographical memories. Congruence between social roles and implicit personality motives (e.g., an agentic task assignment and high agentic motives) yielded less negatively laden autobiographical memories than incongruence between social roles and personality motives (e.g., an agentic task assignment and high communal motives). Furthermore, participants who scored high on both explicit agentic and communal motives included more positive emotion words in their memories than did other groups.     

Relationship between frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and cognitive failure

Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal experiences that pop into mind without a conscious attempt at their retrieval. This study investigated individual differences in the number of involuntary autobiographical memories, and explored the relationship between the frequency of occurrence in involuntary autobiographical memory and cognitive failures in everyday memory, as indexed by metamemory questionnaires. A total of 24 undergraduate students reported involuntary autobiographical memories in controlled field interviews, and completed the Everyday Memory Questionnaire and the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire. The results showed that, despite controlled conditions, considerable individual differences were observed in the number of involuntary autobiographical memories reported while walking along a prescribed route on the campus, and that reported memories were predominantly serving self function. In addition, the number of involuntary autobiographical memories was positively related to cognitive failures in everyday memory: participants who acknowledged more problems in everyday memory had a higher frequency of involuntary memories. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of the complementary function of involuntary autobiographical memory in everyday life.     

Characterisation of music-evoked autobiographical memories

Despite music's prominence in Western society and its importance to individuals in their daily lives, very little is known about the memories and emotions that are often evoked when hearing a piece of music from one's past. We examined the content of music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) using a novel approach for selecting stimuli from a large corpus of popular music, in both laboratory and online settings. A set of questionnaires probed the cognitive and affective properties of the evoked memories. On average, 30% of the song presentations evoked autobiographical memories, and the majority of songs also evoked various emotions, primarily positive, that were often felt strongly. The third most common emotion was nostalgia. Analyses of written memory reports found both general and specific levels of autobiographical knowledge to be represented, and several social and situational contexts for memory formation were common across many memories. The findings indicate that excerpts of popular music serve as potent stimuli for studying the structure of autobiographical memories.     

A matter of focus: Detailed memory in the intentional autobiographical recall of older and younger adults

The intricately interwoven role of detailed autobiographical memory in our daily lives and in our imaginative envisioning of the future is increasingly recognized. But how is the detail-rich nature of autobiographical memory best assessed and, in particular, how can possible aging-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity be most effectively evaluated? This study examined whether a modified interview, involving fewer and time-matched events for older and younger adults, yielded age-related outcomes similar to those that have been previously reported. As in earlier studies, modest age-related changes in the specificity of autobiographical recall were observed, yet the largest most robust effect for both age groups was the substantial proportion of specific details retrieved. Both age groups rated recent memories as significantly less important and as less emotional than more temporally distant events. Our findings counter conceptions of older adults’ autobiographical memories as invariably less episodically rich than those of younger adults.     

Operant conditioning of autobiographical memory retrieval

Functional avoidance is considered as one of the key mechanisms underlying overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM). According to this view OGM is regarded as a learned cognitive avoidance strategy, based on principles of operant conditioning; i.e., individuals learn to avoid the emotionally painful consequences associated with the retrieval of specific negative memories. The aim of the present study was to test one of the basic assumptions of the functional avoidance account, namely that autobiographical memory retrieval can be brought under operant control. Here 41 students were instructed to retrieve personal memories in response to 60 emotional cue words. Depending on the condition, they were punished with an aversive sound for the retrieval of specific or nonspecific memories in an operant conditioning procedure. Analyzes showed that the course of memory specificity significantly differed between conditions. After the procedure participants punished for nonspecific memories retrieved significantly more specific memories compared to participants punished for specific memories. However, whereas memory specificity significantly increased in participants punished for specific memories, it did not significantly decrease in participants punished for nonspecific memories. Thus, while our findings indicate that autobiographical memory retrieval can be brought under operant control, they do not support a functional avoidance view on OGM.     

Altering access to autobiographical episodes with prior semantic knowledge

Within autobiographical knowledge, semantic and episodic memory are traditionally considered separate, but newer models place them along a continuum, which raises the possibility of an intermediate form of knowledge - personal semantics. This study tested how different types of semantics – general semantics and two forms of personal semantics – impact access to personal episodic memories. In two experiments, participants made a series of true/false judgments about a prime statement, which reflected a general semantic fact, a context-dependent (e.g., repeated event) or context-independent (e.g., trait), personal semantic fact and then retrieved a specific past episodic memory. There was a significantly stronger priming effect for accessing specific episodic memories after judging personal semantic facts versus general facts. We also found that context-dependent and -independent personal semantic facts had separable priming effects on episodic memory. These findings support a continuum model of memory and verifies that there are multiple forms of personal knowledge.     

Coping style and memory specificity in adolescents and adults with histories of child sexual abuse

Individuals with histories of childhood trauma may adopt a nonspecific memory retrieval strategy to avoid unpleasant and intrusive memories. In a sample of 93 adolescents and adults with or without histories of child sexual abuse (CSA), we tested the hypothesis that nonspecific memory retrieval is related to an individual's general tendency to use avoidant (i.e., distancing) coping as a personal problem-solving or coping strategy, especially in victims of CSA. We also examined age differences and other individual differences (e.g., trauma-related psychopathology) as predictors of nonspecific memories. Distancing coping was significantly associated with less specific autobiographical memory. Younger age, lower vocabulary scores, and non-CSA childhood maltreatment (i.e., physical and emotional abuse) also uniquely predicted less autobiographical memory specificity, whereas trauma-related psychopathology was associated with more specific memory. Implications for the development of autobiographical memory retrieval in the context of coping with childhood maltreatment are discussed.     

Induced forgetting and reduced confidence in our personal past? The consequences of selectively retrieving emotional autobiographical memories

People build their sense of self, in part, through their memories of their personal past. What is striking about these personal memories is that, in many instances, they are inaccurate, yet confidently held. Most researchers assume that confidence ratings are based, in large part, on the memory's mnemonic features. That is, the more vivid or detailed the memory, the higher the confidence people have in its accuracy. However, we explore a heretofore underappreciated source on which confidence ratings may be based: the accessibility of memories as a result of selective retrieval. To explore this possibility, we use Anderson, Bjork, and Bjork's retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm with emotional (positive and negative) autobiographical memories. We found the standard RIF effect for memory recall across emotional valence. That is, selective retrieval of emotional autobiographical memories induced forgetting of related, but not retrieved emotional autobiographical memories compared to the baseline. More interestingly, we found that the confidence ratings for positive memories mirrored the RIF pattern: decreased confidence for related, unpracticed autobiographical memories relative to the baseline. For negative memories, we found the opposite pattern: increased confidence for both practiced autobiographical memories and related, unpracticed autobiographical memories. We discuss these results in terms of accessibility, the diverging mnemonic consequences of selectively retrieving positive and negative autobiographical memories and personal identity.     

Childhood remembered: Reports of both unique and repeated events

To explore the significance of repeated memories for individuals' personal histories, we compared the characteristics of young adults' unique and repeated memories of childhood experiences. Memory type (unique vs. repeated) was a within-participant variable. In Experiment 1, college-age participants generated as many early memories as possible in 4 minutes; in Experiment 2, another sample provided complete reports of five early memories in each condition. In both experiments, participants rated the vividness, biographical importance and personal meaning of each memory and labelled the accompanying emotion. Unique memories were more vivid than repeated memories as well as more likely to include negative emotion, regardless of the method of reporting. Most importantly, college students rated their memories for unique and repeated events as equivalently infused with personal meaning. Analysis of the content of the memories reported in Experiment 2 established that unique and repeated memories did not differ in word count or percentages of perceptual terms or words indicating positive affect, although unique memories contained a greater percentage of negative affect. Additional analyses of content provided evidence for differences in the functions served by unique and repeated memories. The results have implications for the study of autobiographical memory and for identifying over-general memories.     

Michael Jackson,Bin Laden and I: Functions of positive and negative,public and private flashbulb memories

This study examined the perceived psychosocial functions of flashbulb memories: It compared positive and negative public flashbulb memories (positive: Bin Laden's death, negative: Michael Jackson's death) with private ones (positive: pregnancy, negative: death of a loved one). A sample of n = 389 young and n = 176 middle-aged adults answered canonical category questions used to identify flashbulb memories and rated the personal significance, the psychological temporal distance, and the functions of each memory (i.e., self-continuity, social-boding, directive functions). Hierarchical regressions showed that, in general, private memories were rated more functional than public memories. Positive and negative private memories were comparable in self-continuity and directionality, but the positive private memory more strongly served social functions. In line with the positivity bias in autobiographical memory, positive flashbulb memories felt psychologically closer than negative ones. Finally, middle-aged adults rated their memories as less functional regarding self-continuity and social-bonding than young adults. Results are discussed regarding the tripartite model of autobiographical memory functions.     

Olfactory cues are more effective than visual cues in experimentally triggering autobiographical memories

Folk wisdom often refers to odours as potent triggers for autobiographical memory, akin to the Proust phenomenon that describes Proust’s sudden recollection of a childhood memory when tasting a madeleine dipped into tea. Despite an increasing number of empirical studies on the effects of odours on cognition, conclusive evidence is still missing. We set out to examine the effectiveness of childhood and non-childhood odours as retrieval cues for autobiographical memories in a lab experiment. A total of 170 participants were presented with pilot-tested retrieval cues (either odours or images) to recall childhood memories and were then asked to rate the vividness, detail, and emotional intensity of these memories. Results showed that participants indeed reported richer memories when presented with childhood-related odours than childhood-related images or childhood-unrelated odours or images. An exploratory analysis of memory content with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count did not reveal differences in affective content. The findings of this study support the notion that odours are particularly potent in eliciting rich memories and open up numerous avenues for further exploration.     

“Owning” the personal past: Adolescents’ and adults’ autobiographical narratives and ratings of memories of recent and distant events

Adults and adolescents are characterised as having different perspectives on their personal or autobiographical memories. Adults are recognised as having vivid recollections of past events and as appreciating the meaning and significance of their autobiographical memories. In development, these qualities are noted as absent as late as adolescence. To evaluate the assumption of developmental differences, we directly compared autobiographical memories of adults and adolescents drawn from each of several periods in the past, using measures of narrative quality (coded independently) and participants’ own subjective ratings of their memories. Adults’ narratives of events from the previous year and for the “most significant” event of their lives were coded as more thematically coherent relative to those of adolescents’; the groups did not differ on thematic coherence of narratives of early-life events (ages 1–5 and 6–10 years). The ratings that adults and adolescents provided of their autobiographical memories were similar overall; differences were more apparent for early-life events than for more recent events and indicated stronger mnemonic experiences among adolescents than adults. The pattern of findings suggests that whereas adults have more sophisticated narrative tools for describing the significance of events and their relation to the corpus of autobiographical memories, adolescents as well as adults have vivid recollective experiences as well as personal and subjective perspective on the events of their lives and their memories thereof.     

Going forward by drawing from the past: personal strivings, personally meaningful memories, and personality traits

The present research explored the idea that what people strive for in their daily lives is meaningfully linked to their autobiographical memories and stable personality characteristics. Study 1 showed that (a) personal strivings (both self-reported and content coded) are related to the emotional and motivational content of self-defining memories, (b) personal strivings are related to self-esteem and narcissism, and (c) the relation between personal strivings and personality is partially mediated by memory content. Study 2 extended these findings to a longitudinal context and showed that personal strivings and memory content reciprocally influence each other over time. Together, the findings suggest that when people consider how to move forward in their lives, they draw on their past experiences to establish goals for the future and that the way this process plays out is shaped by people's stable personality characteristics.     

Knowledge of memory functions in European and Asian American adults and children: The relation to autobiographical memory

This study investigated explicit knowledge of autobiographical memory functions using a newly developed questionnaire. European and Asian American adults (N = 57) and school-aged children (N = 68) indicated their agreement with 13 statements about why people think about and share memories pertaining to four broad functions—self, social, directive and emotion regulation. Children were interviewed for personal memories concurrently with the memory function knowledge assessment and again 3 months later. It was found that adults agreed to the self, social and directive purposes of memory to a greater extent than did children, whereas European American children agreed to the emotion regulation purposes of memory to a greater extent than did European American adults. Furthermore, European American children endorsed more self and emotion regulation functions than did Asian American children, whereas Asian American adults endorsed more directive functions than did European American adults. Children's endorsement of memory functions, particularly social functions, was associated with more detailed and personally meaningful memories. These findings are informative for the understanding of developmental and cultural influences on memory function knowledge and of the relation of such knowledge to autobiographical memory development.