Lecture 8 –

Autobiographical Memory
PSYC340
Miri Besken
Autobiographical Memory
• Autobiographical memory refers to our specific
memories about events and knowledge about the
self
• Specific memories are more related to episodic memory.
• Knowledge about the self is more related to semantic
memory
• Typically conceptualized as a function of how we
represent ourselves in our memory system rather
than a specific single memory system
Contents of Autobiographical
Memory
• Important events related to oneself (graduation,
marriage, divorce, etc.)
• Less important events related oneself (what you
ate at breakfast)
• Knowledge about the self (shoe size, personality
characteristics, allergies, pet peeves)
• Flashbulb memories→ highly confident personal
memory of public events (2016 coup attempts)
 Conway’s Theory of Representation in
Autobiographical Memory
• Autobiographical memories
are represented at three
levels:
• Lifetime themes

• Generalized and repeated

themes

• Specific episodic memories

Conway’s Theory of Representation in
Autobiographical Memory
• The stages are represented hierarchically and being
able to access one lifetime period can lead to
unlocking of episodic events as well:
• Lifetime periods –Idiosyncratic ways of arranging our
autobiographical past
• General events - Repeated themes that happen regularly
that are averaged, combined or cumulative & can also
include extended chain of episodic events
• Event-specific memories: Individual events stored in
memory
• The stages are defined through the “working-self”
Conway’s Theory of Representation in
Autobiographical Memory
• The stages are represented hierarchically and being
able to access one lifetime period can lead to
unlocking of episodic events as well:
• An example:
• Lifetime periods (e.g. high school, graduate school,
elementary school)
• General events (repeated themes that happen regularly
→ training for a triathlon during graduate school)
• Event-specific memories (was able to complete the
triathlon under the heated sun. I was fastest at
swimming and slowest in biking)
Event-Specific Memories
• Fundamental units of our memory
• Can change in timing
• Instants (the moment that you locked eyes with that
stranger in the coffee shop)
• Extended events (the worst date that you had)
• Episode may be too ambiguous
• Particular events can be broken into details
General events
• Can be either:
• Combined, average, cumulative events (e.g., going
grocery shopping)
• Extended event→ representation of long sequence of
connected episodic events (e.g. Cappadoccia vacation
that you had in the first year of college)
→Mini-histories
Lifetime Periods
• Is an idiosyncratic organization of personal past
• Examples (e.g. undergraduate times at METU; time
before and after meeting my significant other)
• Can have different categorizations & labels
• The time within the same label can overlap
• Good cues to retrieve general events or episodic
events
The working self
• Goals and self-images that make up our view of self
• Function of aspirations and expectations along with
your actual memory →
• Thinking of oneself as an extrovert (many instances of
yourself finding happiness & getting energized through
being with others than being with oneself)
• The working self allows you to organize your
memory through cues → leads to easier retrieval of
certain memories and inhibition of others
self-relevant cues: if you think you are extrovert, then the events supporting this will be more easily retrieved
contextual cues: context can trigger memories about oneself “Walking into a school might trigger memories of your high school years.”
goal oriented cues:If you are preparing for a job interview, you might easily recall past professional achievements or relevant skills.
emotional cues: Feeling happy might make positive memories easier to retrieve, while sadness could evoke negative memories.
inhibitory cues: The working self also selectively inhibits certain memories that might not align with your current goals or self-perception.
If you see yourself as someone who has "moved on" from a difficult past relationship, the working self might suppress memories related to that relationship.
The working self functions
• Two functions
• Coherence: Processes that yield consistent memories
with working self → recall the time that you started
speaking to a stranger (extraversion)
Coherence helps maintain a stable sense of self and identity by aligning memories with who you believe you are.

• Correspondence: Requirement that retrieved memories

match actual past events → accurate reflection of past
experiences
Contents of autobiographical
memory: Childhood Amnesia
• Nonexistent memory of early childhood
• Is difficult to study
• Methodologically
1. You can ask participants to share their earliest
memories
2. You can target certain possible event (birth of younger
sibling, move to a new city)
3. Exhaustive search of memory for events from birth on
4. Cue word method: Presenting participants with cue
words, prompting them to recall the earliest memory
associated with that word
Contents of autobiographical
memory: Childhood Amnesia Causes
• Psychodynamic view
• We have inappropriate sexual thoughts from a young
age on. In order to be in line with the requirements of
the society, we learn to actively repress our memories of
the time → not taken very seriously in the current ways
of thinking about memory
• Neurological Transitions in Memory Systems
• Relevant neural structures are not fully mature for
episodic and autobiographical to be formed until age
three → disfavored because of emerging neural
evidence showing that we indeed have these structures
Contents of autobiographical
memory: Childhood Amnesia Causes
• Age-related changes in self-concept
• Infants see the world as an extention of themselves
• Self starts to form around 1.5
• As sense of self develops, one can start encoding the
experiences in line with the developing self-concept
• Influence of language on Memory Development
• Language provides the structure and the narrative schemas to
necessary for forming episodic memories
• Women have earlier c.a offset (form language earlier as well)
• Children with stronger linguistic abilities recall more events
from earlier times
• If an event is formed nonverbally, it does not typically change
form later
• Simcock and Hayne experiment – Magical object shrinking
machine
Contents of autobiographical
memory: Childhood Amnesia Causes
• Childhood amnesia may result from multiple causes
• Poor encoding
• Not having learned the strategies for retrieving events
later
• Poor language
• NO schemas in which to interpret events
Content of Autobiographical
Memories: Flashbulb Memories
• A highly confident personal memory of surprising
events - Memory for circumstances surrounding
shocking, highly charged important events
• Typically studied through important public events
• Failed coup attempt
• Gezi events
• But flashbulb memories are not limited to public
events
• People have increased memory for their
surroundings and what went on for themselves, not
the event itself
 Flashbulb Memories: Initial
Findings
• Initial studies found that
• Kennedy assassination
→Events that are highly emotional are described vividly and very
detailed.
→Older memories are remembered just as strong as previous ones
→More relevant to ind., more chances of recall
• No way to control the accuracy of the flashbulb memories when
the reports are taken only once
• To unconfound flashbulb memories experimentally,
repeated recall procedures are used:
• Participants are asked to recall events right after the event
• Then, the memory is tested in different time intervals (e.g. 6
months later, 1 year later, 5 years later) and compared to the
initial recall
Flashbulb memories: Later studies
• Memories of 9/11 were investigated
• Participants report strong negative emotions initially
• When later contacted, participants still when and where,
but strong emotional reactions are forgotten
• Even after 10 years, when / where /what is remembered
• Most memories stabilize after a year or so
• Even though most memories are emotional, memories
themselves can be forgotten.
Flashbulb Memories: Accuracy
Talarico and Rubin (2003)
• Participants are given an
initial interview about
9/11 and some everyday
event
• Tested at different times
• Results indicate:
• The decrease in the number
of details remembered was
similar for memories of
• Flashbulb memories seem to be 9/11 and for memories of
an everyday event.
subject to the same memory decay, like
• Participants’ belief that
everyday events, but participants’ their memory was accurate
confidence in them does not decrease, remained high for 9/11, but
unlike everyday events decreased for memories of
the everyday event.
Flashbulb memory: Accuracy
• Various factors can factor into the findings:
• Content of the news vs personal information regarding
what/when/where has to be distinguished. The memory for
the event decreases, but information relating to self is high
even after long intervals
• Turkish students reports for 9/11(Tekcan et al, 2003)
• The same is true for 1999 earthquake (Er, 2003)
• The proximal distance from the event can also change the
quality of flashbulb memories
• If the event concerns you, the chances of forming flashbulb
memories is higher.
• British citizens remember Thatcher’s resignation, but not Danish
citizens
• The death of the Pope is remembered by Catholicss, but not by
people from other religions
Flashbulb Memory: Theories
• Special Mechanism Approach
• The original theory.
• There is a special mechanism for flashbulb that is strong
and accurate
• Not all flashbulb theories are accurate, creating a
problem or this theory
• Ordinary Mechanism Approach
• Normal memories for highly charged emotional events
• Subject to same forgetting mechanisms as everyday
events
• Forgetting is typically schema-consistent
Autobiographical Memory
Contents: Collaborative Memory
• Working together with other people to remember
information
• Studying for exams
• Strategy sessions for businesses
• Collaborative memory leads people to remember
less than individuals remembering alone
Ways of Assessing
Autobiographical Memory
• Diary studies
• Participants are asked to keep a journal for a few
months, recordings what, where, when, with whom
• They are not allowed to review it during retention
• At certain times, by giving cue words, participants
retrieve memories
• Case Study with diary → What, where, with whom >
when & high levels of recall
• Diary study with college students → recall is again very
high, memories relevant to one’s life story are recalled
more often
• Cues become important in retrieval
Ways of Assessing
Autobiographical Memory
• Cue-word technique
• Participants are given cue
words and asked to report
events from their lives from
any time
• Interestingly, when older
adults are given these cue
words, the retrieval from
different intervals of life is
not equivalent. →
Participants typically report
the highest number of
memories between 15 and
25→ This is the
reminiscence bump
Causes of Reminiscence Bump
• Cognitive theories
• Most experiences are happening for the first time, so they are
encoded better
• If there is a period of rapid change that is followed by stability, one
can encode the evets more easily
• Case of immigrants at age 24 vs. age 34
• Neurological views
• Young adults have the most efficient encoding system neurally
• Sociocultural Views
• Times when identity formation happens is mostly between 16-25
• If the memory is in line with sociocultural script, people have a
script to build their lives on
• If people identify themselves in certain social roles, they happen to
remember more memories related to that role, because social roles
are highly remembered from 16-25, this leads to higher memory
performance for that time period
Use of senses as retrieval cues
• Music-evoked memories
• Participants listen to songs from certain periods, leading to
highly specific concrete recollections
• Acts as a strong cue
• Sense of smell
• Odors evoke feelings of nostalgia
• Three conditions:
• Smell odor and participants asked to report memory
• Name of odor presented and participants asked to report memory
• Present both name and odor
• Lowest number of memories for only names
• Only-odor condition produces the oldest and most emotional
memories (name and odor may interfere with the memory)
Aspects of Autobiographical
memory: Type of view
• Field vs. Observer Views
• Observer view: One perceives the memory as though
one is watching the memory from outside
• Field view: One perceives the memory as an active agent
involved in the event
• We mostly have field view, but observer view is also
reported
• Memories are flexible and individuals can go back and
forth between these two views
• Clinical psychologists direct their patients with PTSD to
remember the event from observer view to distance the
patient further away from the memory emotionally
Aspects of Autobiographical
memory. Type of memory
• Involuntary memories
• Retrieval without conscious effort / control
• May be problematic (e.g., PTSD)
• Involuntary memories are sometimes studied through music
• Might potentially be related to some form of classical
conditioning
• Music is highly specific for certain situations
• Disputed memories
• Individual thinks that the memory belongs to him, but
parents report that it is the memory of older / younger sibling
• More common across identical twins
Neuroscience of Autobiographical
Memory
• Remembering is complex
• Order of activation in the brain
• Addis et al (2012)→Prefrontal cortex followed by
occipital lobe (retrieval of specific memory followed by
visual generation of the event)
• Desalaar (2008) Initial activation at hippocampus &
medial temporal lobe (search of memory) within 1.5
secs, followed by occipital lobe (visual imagery
generation) & left prefrontal activity (verbal memory?)
leveling off about 12 seconds
• Emotion & auto. Mem
• Higher activation in hippocampus and amygdala
Summary
• Autobiographical memory definition
• Model: (lifetime & general & specific) + working self
• Contents of memory
• Childhood amnesia (definition, methodology, theories)
• Flashbulb memory (definition, methodology, accuracy & theories)
• Collaborative memory
• Assessment of memory
• Diary studies
• Cue word-technique (reminiscence bump & theories)
• Can use words, smell or music as cues
• Other aspects
• Type of view (field vs. observer)
• Type of memory (involuntary, disputed)
• Neuroscience of memory