Point of view in personal memories

A structural aspect of personal memories was examined in four studies. In some memories, one has the perspective of an observer, seeing oneself “from the outside.” In other memories, one sees the scene from one's own perspective; the field of view in such memories corresponds to that of the original situation. The existence of “observer” and “field” memories was confirmed in Study 1, using a recall questionnaire. In Study 2, the similarity structure of a specified set of eight to-be-recalled situations was established: the significant dimensions were “emotionality” and “self-awareness.” Study 3 related these dimensions to the observer-field distinction; situations involving a high degree of emotion and selfawareness were most likely to be recalled with an observer perspective. Recall set was varied in Study 4: a focus on feelings (as opposed to objective circumstances) produced relatively more field memories. Studies 3 and 4 also showed that events reported as more recent tend to be recalled in the field mode. Thus a qualitative characteristic of personal memories—the perspective from which they are experienced—is apparently related to characteristics of the original event, to the individual's purpose in recalling that event, and to the reported recall interval.