DOCSLIB.ORG

Directed Search Through Autobiographical Memory

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Directed Search Through Autobiographical Memory Memory & Cognition 1981, Vol. 9 (6), 566-579 Directed search through autobiographical memory WILLIAM B. WHITTEN II BellLaboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey 07733 and JANET MAURIELLO LEONARD State University ofNew York, Albany, New York 12203 Two experiments were designed to study retrieval from a well-ordered set of overlearned information in long-term autobiographical memory. In Experiment 1, each of 161 university students was asked to recall the name of one teacher from each of the 12 preuniversity school years. Recall was cued in forward (Grades 1-12), backward (Grades 12-1), or random order. Backward-ordered search proved most efficient: Fewer students failed to complete the task in that search order, and those who did complete the task were faster than the successful students in the other search orders. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, except that the 148 students tested were asked to "think aloud" as they attempted recall. From the resulting protocols. 25 categories of verbal reports were identified, including four that reflected retrieval strategies. Omission errors (failures to recall teachers' names) and, with one exception, frequencies of verbal reports decreased as recency increased. Taken together, the results of both experiments show that the recall of one item can indirectly aid the recall of contiguous items and that the probability of recalling an item from autobiographical memory is primarily a function of recency. Who was your third-grade teacher? Such questions seem to be easily remembered while other events seem tap information that we usually describe as autobio­ hopelessly forgotten. graphical. While the term "autobiographical memory" With few exceptions (e.g., Waldfogel,1948),mostnon­ could be used as a synonym for episodic memory clinical studies of autobiographical memory have been (Tulving, 1972), it is more useful to define autobio­ reported since 1970. These recent studies fall into two graphical memory as that set of information pertaining broad categories. The first category uses Galton's (1907) to extraexperimentally experienced events.' So defined, technique of open-ended association to each of a series the most certain statements that can be made about of words. On each trial, a single word is presented, and autobiographical memory are that we know relatively the subject is told to report the first autobiographical little about its dynamics and that it is of great interest episode that the word brings to mind. Five such studies to psychologists and nonpsychologists alike. The reasons have been published. Testing college students with this we know little about autobiographical memory are procedure, Crovitz and Schiffman (1974) found a obvious: It is difficult to do experiments over very long linear relation between the log of report frequency and intervals, and it is even more difficult to exert experi­ the log of report recency such that more reports were mental control over what is, by definition, information from the more recent time periods. Crovitz and Quina­ stored idiosyncratically throughout one's life. Neverthe­ Holland (1976) found that the reports of college stu­ less, autobiographical memory is of interest to psycholo­ dents increased as a function of recency over the first gists who would like to determine the generalizability of 7 years of life. Franklin and Holding (1977) tested typical episodic laboratory phenomena to extraexperi­ subjects whose ages ranged from 25 to 74 years and also mental situations. In addition, this class of memory is of found recency effects. McCormack (1979), however, interest to anyone who ever wondered by some events found check-mark-shaped functions when the reminis­ cences of older people (from 53 to 102 years of age) were plotted against quartiles of the life span. Robinson This report is an extension of a paper presented at the meetings of the Psychonomic Society, Phoenix, November 1979. (1976) tested college students with this paradigm to We wish to thank several people who helped with this project. study word-class effects and found that affect words Stephanie Sorrentino collected the data for Experiment 1. elicited more recent memories, on the average, than did Taren Chaiet and Nancy Downey helped with Experiment 2. object or activity words, but that affect-cued events Janice Bauhoff helped with a pilot study. Sandra Whitten typed the manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent to William were reported more slowly than were object-cued or B. Whitten II, Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey activity-cued episodes. 07733. The second category of studies includes a variety of Copyright 1981 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 566 0090-502X/81!060566-14$01.65/0 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY 567 techniques used to assesssubjects' memories for particu­ extent of information stored during a person's life, it is lar events, such as news items (Botwinick & Storandt, possible to manipulate the conditions of retrieval. In 1974; Linton, 1975; Sanders & Warrington, 1971; order to learn about the relative efficiency of various Squire, 1974; Underwood, 1977; Warrington & Sanders, retrieval strategies, it is only necessary to identify some 1971; Warrington & Silberstein, 1970), television shows ordered set of information that is guaranteed to have (Squire, Chace, & Slater, 1975; Squire & Slater, 1975; been stored by all subjects in the experiment. Major Squire, Slater, & Chace, 1975), famous race horses news events constitute one possible set of information. (Squire & Slater, 1975), famous faces (Sanders & Unfortunately, however, we cannot guarantee that all Warrington, 1971; Warrington & Sanders, 1971), class­ subjects will have experienced all the news events mates [Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975; Williams, equally or that their knowledge of the events will date Note 1), teachers (Schonfield, 1969), and all people from the events' occurrences rather than from later known personally (Riegel, 1973). Several of these discussions. In addition, it is probable that news events studies have found that memory is better for more are mostly ignored by young children, so only those recent events (Linton, 1975; Riegel, 1973; Squire, events occurring during the adolescent and adult years Chace, & Slater, 1975; Squire & Slater, 1975;Warrington can be tested. Similar criticisms can be levied against & Sanders, 1971; Warrington & Silberstein, 1970). the use of television shows, race horses, sporting events, Underwood (1977) has reported that subjects' accuracy and so on. In fact, it is very difficult to think of any for temporally ordering events in pairs increases as the ordered set of information that is guaranteed to be time between the events increases. Squire, Chace, and shared equally by all people. The main source of such Slater (1975) have found the complementary result, shared experience would be a function of a culture's that correct temporal ordering of equidistant events institutions. In the United States, the dominant institu­ in pairs decreases with increasing retention intervals. tion is probably the educational system, and it is true And Linton (1975), using herself as the sole subject, that the vast majority of university students have experi­ found both of these results. Some studies have shown enced 12 years of preuniversity schooling. Furthermore, differences between recall and recognition performance during each of those school years, the majority of (e.g., Bahrick et al., 1975; Warrington & Sanders, 1971; students have had one or more teachers with whom daily Warrington & Silberstein, 1970), and one study has or semidaily contact occurred. This repeated contact attempted to capture the character of extended retrieval with teachers during the course of a school year surely by describing recurrent phenomena found in verbal results in overlearning to the extent that an occasional protocols (Williams,Note 1). remembrance of any particular teacher should have Summarizing this previous research, we can say that relatively small long-term consequences for subsequent we now have some information on the frequency of retrieval. In addition, it is typical for a student to have freely recalled memories from the fractions of one's had different teachers each year, and for each year to life, the frequency and speed of retrieving events asso­ have been punctuated by a 3-month summer vacation. ciated with various classes of words, the forgetting func­ Consequently, for the majority of university students, tions for recall and recognition over very long time teachers from these 12 years of school constitute an intervals, the ability to order events along the temporal ordered set of information in memory. Thus, in spite dimension, and some descriptions of the retrieval process of some minor problems that will be detailed below, as gleaned from self-reports. The type of information teachers from the 12 years of preuniversity schooling missing from the literature thus far is information that constitute a viable set of information for autobiographi­ would enable a description of retrieval dynamics, infor­ cal memory experiments, since this information is mation that would allow a prescription for an optimal ordered, is overlearned, and is in the experience of most retrieval strategy, and information that would allow of our subject population. For these reasons, teachers' extension of laboratory models of storage-retrieval names were the target memories sought by subjects in interactions to the realm of autobiographical memory. our experiments. Consider again the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 20 Memory Techniques
    20 Memory Techniques Experiment 1,viththese techniques to develop a.flexible, custom-made memm}" system that fits your stJ:fe qf learning the content <ifyour courses and the skills <~/'your,sport. 17w 20 techniques are divided intnfour categories, each 1-vhichrepresents a general principlefiJr improving mem.ory. Organize it 1. Be selective. To a large degree, the art of memory is the a,t of selecting what to remember in the first place. As you dig into your textbooks, playbooks. and notes, make choices about what is most important to learn. Imagine that you are going to create a test on the material and consider the questions you would ask. When reading, look for chapter previews, summaries, and review questions. Pay attention to anything printed in bold type. A !so notice visual elements, such as charts, graphs, and illustrations. All of these are clues pointing to what's important. During lectures, notice what the instructor emphasizes. During practice, focus on what your coach requires you to repeat. Anything that presented visually-on the board, on overheads, or with slides-is also key. 2. Make it meaningful. One way to create meaning is to learn from the general to the specific. Before tackling the details, get the big picture. Before you begin your next reading assignment, for example, skim it lo locate the main idea. If you're ever lost, step back and recall that idea. The details might make more sense. You can also organize any list of items-even random ones-in a meaningful way to make them easier to remember.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is It Like to Be Confabulating?
    What is it like to be Confabulating? Sahba Besharati, Aikaterini Fotopoulou and Michael D. Kopelman Kings College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London UK Different kinds of confabulations may arise in neurological and psychiatric disorders. This chapter first offers conceptual distinctions between spontaneous and momentary (“provoked”) confabulations, as well as between these types of confabulation and other kinds of false memories. The chapter then reviews current explanatory theories, emphasizing that both neurocognitive and motivational factors account for the content of confabulations. We place particular emphasis on a general model of confabulation that considers cognitive dysfunctions in memory and executive functioning in parallel with social and emotional factors. It is argued that all these dimensions need to be taken into account for a phenomenologically rich description of confabulation. The role of the motivated content of confabulation and the subjective experience of the patient are particularly relevant in effective management and rehabilitation strategies. Finally, we discuss a case example in order to illustrate how seemingly meaningless false memories are actually meaningful if placed in the context of the patient’s own perspective and autobiographical memory. Key words: Confabulation; False memory; Motivation; Self; Rehabilitation. 1 Memory is often subject to errors of omission and commission such that recollection includes instances of forgetting, or distorting past experience. The study of pathological forms of exaggerated memory distortion has provided useful insights into the mechanisms of normal reconstructive remembering (Johnson, 1991; Kopelman, 1999; Schacter, Norman & Kotstall, 1998). An extreme form of pathological memory distortion is confabulation. Different variants of confabulation are found to arise in neurological and psychiatric disorders.
    [Show full text]
  • Emotionally Charged Autobiographical Memories Across the Life Span: the Recall of Happy, Sad, Traumatic, and Involuntary Memories
    Psychology and Aging Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2002, Vol. 17, No. 4, 636–652 0882-7974/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0882-7974.17.4.636 Emotionally Charged Autobiographical Memories Across the Life Span: The Recall of Happy, Sad, Traumatic, and Involuntary Memories Dorthe Berntsen David C. Rubin University of Aarhus Duke University A sample of 1,241 respondents between 20 and 93 years old were asked their age in their happiest, saddest, most traumatic, most important memory, and most recent involuntary memory. For older respondents, there was a clear bump in the 20s for the most important and happiest memories. In contrast, saddest and most traumatic memories showed a monotonically decreasing retention function. Happy involuntary memories were over twice as common as unhappy ones, and only happy involuntary memories showed a bump in the 20s. Life scripts favoring positive events in young adulthood can account for the findings. Standard accounts of the bump need to be modified, for example, by repression or reduced rehearsal of negative events due to life change or social censure. Many studies have examined the distribution of autobiographi- (1885/1964) drew attention to conscious memories that arise un- cal memories across the life span. No studies have examined intendedly and treated them as one of three distinct classes of whether this distribution is different for different classes of emo- memory, but did not study them himself. In his well-known tional memories. Here, we compare the event ages of people’s textbook, Miller (1962/1974) opened his chapter on memory by most important, happiest, saddest, and most traumatic memories quoting Marcel Proust’s description of how the taste of a Made- and most recent involuntary memory to explore whether different leine cookie unintendedly brought to his mind a long-forgotten kinds of emotional memories follow similar patterns of retention.
    [Show full text]
  • Pervasive Autobiographical Memory Loss Encompassing Personali
    Autobiographical memory unknown 1 Autobiographical memory unknown: Pervasive autobiographical memory loss encompassing personality trait knowledge in an individual with medial temporal lobe amnesia Aubrey A. Wanka,b, Anna Robertsona1, Sean C. Thayera, Mieke Verfaelliec,d, Steven Z. Rapcsaka,b,f, & Matthew D. Grillia,e,f* aDepartment of Psychology, 1503 E University Blvd., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA; bBanner Alzheimer’s Institute, 2626 E River Rd., Tucson, Arizona 85718, USA; cMemory Disorders Research Center, 150 South Huntington Ave., VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts 02130, USA; dDepartment of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, 72 East Concord St. Boston, Massachusetts 02118 ; eEvelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, 1503 E University Blvd., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721, USA; fDepartment of Neurology, 1501 N Campbell Ave., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85724, USA. 1Anna Robertson is now at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Psychology Department, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy., Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918, USA Email addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Corresponding Authors: Matthew D. Grilli; Aubrey A. Wank Email Address: [email protected]; [email protected] Postal Address: 1503 E University Blvd., Tucson, Arizona 85721 Autobiographical memory unknown 2 Abstract Autobiographical memory consists of distinct memory types varying from highly abstract to episodic. Self trait knowledge, which is considered one of the more abstract types of autobiographical memory, is thought to rely on regions of the autobiographical memory neural network implicated in schema representation, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and critically, not the medial temporal lobes.
    [Show full text]
  • Memory-Modulation: Self-Improvement Or Self-Depletion?
    HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY published: 05 April 2018 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00469 Memory-Modulation: Self-Improvement or Self-Depletion? Andrea Lavazza* Neuroethics, Centro Universitario Internazionale, Arezzo, Italy Autobiographical memory is fundamental to the process of self-construction. Therefore, the possibility of modifying autobiographical memories, in particular with memory-modulation and memory-erasing, is a very important topic both from the theoretical and from the practical point of view. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the state of the art of some of the most promising areas of memory-modulation and memory-erasing, considering how they can affect the self and the overall balance of the “self and autobiographical memory” system. Indeed, different conceptualizations of the self and of personal identity in relation to autobiographical memory are what makes memory-modulation and memory-erasing more or less desirable. Because of the current limitations (both practical and ethical) to interventions on memory, I can Edited by: only sketch some hypotheses. However, it can be argued that the choice to mitigate Rossella Guerini, painful memories (or edit memories for other reasons) is somehow problematic, from an Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy ethical point of view, according to some of the theories of the self and personal identity Reviewed by: in relation to autobiographical memory, in particular for the so-called narrative theories Tillmann Vierkant, University of Edinburgh, of personal identity, chosen here as the main case of study. Other conceptualizations of United Kingdom the “self and autobiographical memory” system, namely the constructivist theories, do Antonella Marchetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, not have this sort of critical concerns.
    [Show full text]
  • Elaborative Encoding, the Ancient Art of Memory, and the Hippocampus
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2013) 36, 589–659 provided by RERO DOC Digital Library doi:10.1017/S0140525X12003135 Such stuff as dreams are made on? Elaborative encoding, the ancient art of memory, and the hippocampus Sue Llewellyn Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, Manchester M15 6PB, United Kingdom http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk [email protected] Abstract: This article argues that rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming is elaborative encoding for episodic memories. Elaborative encoding in REM can, at least partially, be understood through ancient art of memory (AAOM) principles: visualization, bizarre association, organization, narration, embodiment, and location. These principles render recent memories more distinctive through novel and meaningful association with emotionally salient, remote memories. The AAOM optimizes memory performance, suggesting that its principles may predict aspects of how episodic memory is configured in the brain. Integration and segregation are fundamental organizing principles in the cerebral cortex. Episodic memory networks interconnect profusely within the cortex, creating omnidirectional “landmark” junctions. Memories may be integrated at junctions but segregated along connecting network paths that meet at junctions. Episodic junctions may be instantiated during non–rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep after hippocampal associational function during REM dreams. Hippocampal association involves relating, binding, and integrating episodic memories into a mnemonic compositional whole. This often bizarre, composite image has not been present to the senses; it is not “real” because it hyperassociates several memories. During REM sleep, on the phenomenological level, this composite image is experienced as a dream scene.
    [Show full text]
  • Memory in Mind and Culture
    This page intentionally left blank Memory in Mind and Culture This text introduces students, scholars, and interested educated readers to the issues of human memory broadly considered, encompassing individual mem- ory, collective remembering by societies, and the construction of history. The book is organized around several major questions: How do memories construct our past? How do we build shared collective memories? How does memory shape history? This volume presents a special perspective, emphasizing the role of memory processes in the construction of self-identity, of shared cultural norms and concepts, and of historical awareness. Although the results are fairly new and the techniques suitably modern, the vision itself is of course related to the work of such precursors as Frederic Bartlett and Aleksandr Luria, who in very different ways represent the starting point of a serious psychology of human culture. Pascal Boyer is Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory, departments of psychology and anthropology, at Washington University in St. Louis. He studied philosophy and anthropology at the universities of Paris and Cambridge, where he did his graduate work with Professor Jack Goody, on memory constraints on the transmission of oral literature. He has done anthro- pological fieldwork in Cameroon on the transmission of the Fang oral epics and on Fang traditional religion. Since then, he has worked mostly on the experi- mental study of cognitive capacities underlying cultural transmission. After teaching in Cambridge, San Diego, Lyon, and Santa Barbara, Boyer moved to his present position at the departments of anthropology and psychology at Washington University, St. Louis. James V.
    [Show full text]
  • VIVEKANANDA and the ART of MEMORY June 26, 1994 M. Ram Murty, FRSC1
    VIVEKANANDA AND THE ART OF MEMORY June 26, 1994 M. Ram Murty, FRSC1 1. Episodes from Vivekananda’s life 2. Episodes from Ramakrishna’s life 3. Their memory power compared by Swami Saradananda 4. Other srutidharas from the past 5. The ancient art of memory 6. The laws of memory 7. The role of memory in daily life Episodes from Vivekananda’s life The human problem is one of memory. We have forgotten our divine nature. All the great teachers of the past have declared that the revival of the memory of our divinity is the paramount goal. Memory is a faculty and as such, it is neither good nor bad. Every action that we do, every thought that we think, leaves an indelible trail of memory. Whether we remember or not, the contents are recorded and affect our daily life. Therefore, an awareness of this faculty and its method of operation is vital for healthy existence. Properly employed, it leads us to enlightenment; abused or misused, it can torment us. So we must learn to use it properly, to strengthen it for our own improvement. In studying the life of Vivekananda, we come across many phenomenal examples of his amazing faculty of memory. In ‘Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,’ Haripada Mitra relates the following story: One day, in the course of a talk, Swamiji quoted verbatim some two or three pages from Pickwick Papers. I wondered at this, not understanding how a sanyasin could get by heart so much from a secular book. I thought that he must have read it quite a number of times before he took orders.
    [Show full text]
  • Disordered Memory Awareness: Recollective Confabulation in Two Cases of Persistent Déj`A Vecu
    Neuropsychologia 43 (2005) 1362–1378 Disordered memory awareness: recollective confabulation in two cases of persistent dej´ a` vecu Christopher J.A. Moulin a,b,∗, Martin A. Conway b, Rebecca G. Thompson a, Niamh James a, Roy W. Jones a a The Research Institute for the Care of the Elderly, St. Martin’s Hospital, UK b Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK Received 7 April 2004; received in revised form 10 December 2004; accepted 16 December 2004 Available online 11 March 2005 Abstract We describe two cases of false recognition in patients with dementia and diffuse temporal lobe pathology who report their memory difficulty as being one of persistent dej´ a` vecu—the sensation that they have lived through the present moment before. On a number of recognition tasks, the patients were found to have high levels of false positives. They also made a large number of guess responses but otherwise appeared metacognitively intact. Informal reports suggested that the episodes of dej´ a` vecu were characterised by sensations similar to those present when the past is recollectively experienced in normal remembering. Two further experiments found that both patients had high levels of recollective experience for items they falsely recognized. Most strikingly, they were likely to recollectively experience incorrectly recognised low frequency words, suggesting that their false recognition was not driven by familiarity processes or vague sensations of having encountered events and stimuli before. Importantly, both patients made reasonable justifications for their false recognitions both in the experiments and in their everyday lives and these we term ‘recollective confabulation’.
    [Show full text]
  • AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY and AGING 2005 – Experimental Aging Research, 31, 1
    Autobiographical memory and aging 1 Running head : AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY AND AGING 2005 – Experimental Aging Research, 31, 173-189 Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for emotional and neutral events in older and younger adults. Christine Comblain1, Arnaud D’Argembeau1, 1,2 Martial Van der Linden 1 University of Liège, Belgium 2 University of Geneva, Switzerland Correspondence should be addressed to: Arnaud D’Argembeau, Cognitive Psychopathology Unit, Université de Liège, Boulevard du Rectorat B33, 4000 Liège, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +3243664657 Autobiographical memory and aging 2 Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Government of the French Community of Belgium (Direction de la Recherche Scientifique – Actions de Recherche Concertées, Convention 99/04-246). The authors wish to express their thanks to Caroline Paheau for her help in data collection. Autobiographical memory and aging 3 Abstract We investigated age-related differences in phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories for positive, negative, and neutral events. Younger and older participants were asked to recall two specific memories of each type and then to rate their memories on several sensorial (e.g., visual, taste) and contextual (e.g., location, time) characteristics. We found that emotional (both positive and negative) memories contained more sensorial and contextual details than neutral memories in both age groups, whereas positive and negative memories did not differ on most dimensions. In addition, negative memories were associated with a higher intensity of positive feelings and a reduced complexity of storyline in older as compared to younger adults. These results suggest that the effect of emotion on phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories is similar in younger and older adults, but that older adults tend to reappraise negative events in a more positive light than younger adults.
    [Show full text]
  • TRAUMATIC EVENTS and AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY Aloysius Soesilo
    Traumatic events and autobiographical memory 1 TRAUMATIC EVENTS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY Aloysius Soesilo FAKULTAS PSIKOLOGI UNIVERSITAS KRISTEN SATYA WACANA SALATIGA Traumatic events and autobiographical memory 2 ABSTRAK Tulisan ini berupaya untuk membahas hubungan antara pengalaman traumatik dengan memori autobiografis. Memori traumatik berbeda dari memori pada umumnya yang tidak berhubungan dengan peristiwa trauma. Perbedaan itu nampak di dalam tiga perspektif yang dikemukakan dalam artikel ini, yakni, memori intrusif, teori representasi ganda dan model self-memory-system. Selanjutnya, memori autobiografis serta ketiga fungsinya (self, sosial, dan direktif) dibahas. Emosi mempunyai peranan yang amat penting dalam memori, khususnya di dalam pengaruhnya atas apa yang diingat dan bagaimana apa yang dingat kemudian direkonstruksikan dalam naratif. Di dalam kontruksi memori autobiografis ada tiga komponen pokok yang dibahas, yakni tujuan, proses dan produk. Oleh karena memori autobiografis dan naratif bukan merupakan suatu phenomenon yang terlepas dari konteksnya, maka hubungan resiprokal yang dinamis antara keduanya dan konteks sosial-kultural harus diperhatikan. Naratif traumatis adalah upaya oleh individu untuk mengkontruksikan kembali dirinya dan dunianya setelah peristiwa trauma. Dengan demikian memori autobiografis dan naratif trauma menyediakan pintu masuk bagi studi tentang fenomena penting dalam praktek-praktek kekerasan yang menjadi salah satu ciri dari kehidupan sosial-politis modern. Kata kunci: Traumatic events, autobiographical memory, emotions, construction of self Traumatic events and autobiographical memory 3 TRAUMATIC EVENTS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY Exposure to a wide variety of violent and life-threatening events occurs with a relative frequency has been experienced by many people across the globe. The growing number of autobiographical and biographical accounts of victims of human inflictred trauma attest to the fact that traumatic memories can be remarkably enduring.
    [Show full text]
  • Method-Of-Loci As a Mnemonic Device to Facilitate Access to Self-Affirming Personal Memories for Individuals with Depression
    Brief Empirical Report Clinical Psychological Science 1(2) 156 –162 Method-of-Loci as a Mnemonic Device to © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Facilitate Access to Self-Affirming Personal DOI: 10.1177/2167702612468111 Memories for Individuals With Depression http://cpx.sagepub.com Tim Dalgleish, Lauren Navrady, Elinor Bird, Emma Hill, Barnaby D. Dunn, and Ann-Marie Golden Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK Abstract Depression impairs the ability to retrieve positive, self-affirming autobiographical memories. To counteract this difficulty, we trained individuals with depression, either in episode or remission, to construct an accessible mental repository for a preselected set of positive, self-affirming memories using an ancient mnemonic technique—the method-of-loci (MoL). Participants in a comparison condition underwent a similar training protocol where they chunked the memories into meaningful sets and rehearsed them (rehearsal). Both protocols enhanced memory recollection to near ceiling levels after 1 week of training. However, on a surprise follow-up recall test a further week later, recollection was maintained only in the MoL condition, relative to a significant decrease in memories recalled in the rehearsal group. There were no significant performance differences between those currently in episode and those in remission. The results support use of the MoL as a tool to facilitate access to self-affirming memories in those with depression. Keywords depression, autobiographical memory, method-of-loci, cognitive training Received 7/27/2012; Revision accepted 9/19/2012 The recollection of autobiographical memories of self-affirming, events that can act in the service of mood repair (Williams positive experiences in the day-to-day has been identified as a et al., 2007).
    [Show full text]