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Self-Knowledge of an Amnesic Patient: Toward a Neuropsychology of Personality and Social Psychology

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Self-Knowledge of an Amnesic Patient: Toward a Neuropsychology of Personality and Social Psychology Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1996, Vol. 125, No, 3, 250-260 0096-3445/96/$3.00 Self-Knowledge of an Amnesic Patient: Toward a Neuropsychology of Personality and Social Psychology Stanley B. Klein and Judith Loftus John F. Kihlstrom University of California, Santa Barbara Yale University The authors present the case of W.J., who, as a result of a head injury, temporarily lost access to her episodic memory. W.J. was asked both during her amnesia and following its resolution to make trait judgments about herself. Because her responses when she could access episodic memories were consistent with her responses when she could not, the authors conclude that the loss of episodic memory did not greatly affect the availability of her trait self-knowledge. The authors discuss how neuropsychological evidence can contribute to theorizing about personality and social processes. In recent years, cognitive science has demonstrated the The Role of Episodic and Semantic Memory in Trait usefulness of neuropsychological data to psychological the- Self-Knowledge orists (for reviews, see Kinsbourne, 1987; Polster, Nadel, & Schacter, 1991; Schacter & Tulving, 1994). For example, Does a person's knowledge of his or her own traits studies of patients suffering amnesia as a result of head depend on an ability to recall his or her own past behavior? injury reveal a dissociation between episodic and semantic Is it possible for a person who cannot recall any personal memory that suggests the existence of two distinct systems experiences--and therefore cannot know how he or she (e.g., Grossi, Trojano, Grasso, & Orsini, 1988; Tulving, behaved to know what he or she is like? Questions such as 1989, 1991); similarly, studies of imagery in brain-damaged these have stimulated debate among philosophers (e.g., Grice, 1941; Hume, 1739/1817; Locke, 1690/1731; Shoe- individuals has suggested that visual imagery and spatial maker, 1963) and psychologists (e.g., Buss & Craik, 1983; imagery are mediated by different systems and are thus not James, 1890; Klein & Loftus, 1993b; Locksley & Lenauer, identical (e.g., Farah, 1988; Jankowiak, Kinsbourne, Sha- 1981) for more than 300 years, Unfortunately, as evidenced lev, & Bachman, 1992; Vargha-Khadem, Issacs, & Mish- by the number of years that debate on this topic has per- kin, 1994). sisted, the question of whether trait knowledge is insepara- For social and personality psychologists, however, the ble from memory for past behavior has proven difficult to study of patients with neuropsychological impairments has answer. In this article we make a modest contribution to this rarely been undertaken. In this article we offer the case of debate by demonstrating that an individual can have de- W.J., who suffered profound retrograde amnesia following tailed and accurate knowledge of her traits despite having a head injury, as a demonstration of the way in which little if any conscious access to behavioral memories from questions of interest to social and personality psychologists which she could infer that knowledge. can be addressed with neurological data. Specifically, our Knowledge of personality traits and recollections of spe- tests of W.J. have provided us with data, unobtainable from cific personal events involving those traits can be consid- individuals with no memory loss, that is pertinent to the ered examples of two types of knowledge about the self: debate over the relation between knowledge of traits and semantic personal knowledge and episodic personal knowl- memory for specific personal events relevant to those traits. edge (e.g., Cermak, 1984; Conway, 1987; Evans, Wilson, Wraight, & Hodges, 1993; Kihlstrom et al., 1988; Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994, in press; Klein & Loftus, 1993b; Klein, Loftus, & Sherman, 1993; Kopelman, 1994; Neisser, 1986; Tulving, 1989, 1993; Tulving, Schacter, McLachlan, & Stanley B. Klein and Judith Loftus, Department of Psychology, Moscovitch, 1988; Van der Linden, Bredart, Depoorter, & University of California, Santa Barbara; John F. Kihlstrom, De- Coyette, 1996). Semantic personal knowledge is informa- partment of Psychology, Yale University. tion that has been abstracted from memories of the self in This work was supported by an Academic Senate Research specific events (e.g., Klein & Loftus, 1993b; Neisser, 1986; Grant from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and by Tulving, 1989, 1993; Tulving et al., 1988). Thus, semantic National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH-35856a. We wish to thank Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, and Endel personal knowledge of traits might include the facts that a Tulving for their many insightful comments and suggestions. person is kind, outgoing, and lazy. Episodic personal Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to knowledge, by contrast, consists of memories of specific Stanley B. Klein, Department of Psychology, University of Cali- events involving the self (e.g., Cermak, 1984; Conway, fornia, Santa Barbara, California 93106. 1987; Klein & Loftus, 1993b; Tulving, 1983, 1989, 1993). 250 AMNESIA AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE 251 Thus, episodic personal knowledge of traits could include interplay between the two systems in the performance of memories of instances in which behavior was kind, outgo- experimental tasks and therefore difficult to compellingly ing, or lazy. demonstrate that the two systems are independent. For ex- Our previous research with individuals with no memory ample, although Klein et al. (1989, Experiment 2; see also loss used a number of techniques to examine the relation Klein et al., 1992, Experiments 2, 3, & 4) found that between these two types of trait knowledge about the self. participants appeared to make self-descriptiveness judg- Our data consistently have supported the view that in the ments without retrieving episodic memories, it is possible realm of trait knowledge, semantic personal memory and that episodes were retrieved but that the tests used to detect episodic personal memory are functionally independent, by retrieval were not sufficiently sensitive (for a discussion of which we mean that the operations of semantic personal this possibility, see Keenan, 1993). memory do not require the operations of episodic personal However, amnesic memory impairment offers an oppor- memory (for reviews, see Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994, in tunity to overcome this problem. Amnesic patients provide press; Klein & Loftus, 1993b). a particularly effective method for testing the independence In our initial investigations of the relation between se- of semantic and episodic personal memory, because these mantic and episodic memory for traits, we used a priming patients typically display intact semantic memory with im- paradigm. In a series of studies, we found that participants paired access to episodic memory (e.g., Cermak, 1984; who made self-descriptiveness judgments about trait words Evans et al., 1993; Kinsbourne & Wood, 1975; Schacter & were no faster than participants who performed a control Tulving, 1982; Tulving, 1989, 1991, 1993; Tulving et al., task to then perform a second task that required them to 1988; Tulving et al., 1991; Wood, Ebert, & Kinsbourne, retrieve personal episodic memories about the same traits 1982; but see Zola-Morgan, Cohen, & Squire, 1983, for a (Klein & Loftus, 1990b, 1993a, 1993b; Klein, Loftus, & dissenting view). Therefore, it is possible with amnesic Burton, 1989, Experiment 2; Klein et ai., 1993; Klein, patients to test semantic self-knowledge of traits with as- Loftus, Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992, Experiments 2, 3, & 4; surance that episodic memory for traits is not involved. If Schell, Klein, & Babey, 1996). We concluded from this that the two systems are indeed functionally independent, then the semantic personal knowledge required for a self-de- amnesic patients should be able to make trait self-descrip- scriptiveness judgment was accessed without activating ep- tiveness judgments despite their inability to recall personal isodic personal memories. If episodic memories had been events. activated during the self-descriptiveness judgments, then This hypothesis has been tested by Tulving (1993). Tulv- participants who made those judgments should have had an ing found that the patient K.C., whose entire fund of epi- advantage over participants who performed the control task sodic memory was permanently lost following a motorcycle in the speed with which they subsequently retrieved epi- accident, was able to describe his personality with consid- sodic memories. erable accuracy. Tulving asked K.C. on two occasions to We have conducted several other studies of trait self- rate a list of trait adjectives for self-descriptiveness. Tulving knowledge that also support the independence of semantic also asked K.C.'s mother to rate K.C. on the same traits. and episodic personal memory. Klein, Loftus, and Plog Tulving's findings revealed that K.C.'s ratings were both (1992), for example, made use of the phenomenon of trans- reliable (K.C.'s trait self-ratings showed 78% agreement fer-appropriate processing (e.g., Roediger & Blaxton, 1987; across sessions) and consistent with the way he is perceived Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1988) in a study of recogni- by others (there was 73% agreement between K.C.'s and his tion memory for traits to show that different processes are mother's ratings of K.C.'s traits). K.C. thus appears to have involved in accessing the two types of memory. In addition, accurate and detailed knowledge about
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