Sampling the process of autobiographical memory construction

In three autobiographical memory retrieval experiments participants reported the contents of consciousness to a probe presented at early and late points during retrieval. Classification of the protocols according to the specificity of the reported knowledge found that early in retrieval abstract knowledge predominated whereas at the later point, close to generation or formation of a memory, knowledge related to specific events was more frequent. For some memories very fast and full retrieval was observed at the early point and this was independent of other concurrent processing demands. These findings show that generative retrieval entails iterative access of autobiographical knowledge but this is not observed in direct retrieval.