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What Happens If You Retest Autobiographical Memory 10 Years On?

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What Happens If You Retest Autobiographical Memory 10 Years On? Memory & Cognition 2001, 29 (1), 127-136 What happens if you retest autobiographical memory 10 years on? CHRISTOPHER D. B. BURT and SIMON KEMP University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand and MARTIN CONWAY University of Bristol, Bristol, England Burt (1992a,1992b)reported data on the autobiographical memory of diarists for events that had oc- curred on average 3.3 years earlier. This paper reports data on 11 of the diarists, who were recontacted after a further 10 years and who agreed to a retest of their memory. Estimates of event date and event duration from the two recallattempts were compared. As predicted, duration estimation was extremely stable and showed no detrimental effects of the additional 10 years of retention interval. Estimation of event date was predicted to show an increase in forward telescoping due to the increasedremoteness of the event sample, but, contrary to this prediction, backward telescoping dominated dating errors. A combination of the establishment of a recent boundary and Kemp’s (1999) associative model of dating is proposed as an explanation for these results. It is argued that the nature of dating errors may depend on the time of the event’s occurrence in the life span and the age of the individual dating the events. Over the past 2 decades there have been several inten- date information. We consider duration estimation first. sive examinationsof autobiographicalmemory (e.g., Burt, There is a long history of research on both memory for 1992a, 1992b;Linton,1978;Wagenaar, 1986).One of the and the perception of duration (see Fraisse, 1984, for a dominant features of this work is its reliance on cross- review). Much of this work has examined duration esti- sectional data sets. Although memory for events with mation under controlledlaboratory conditionsusing stim- vastly different retention intervalshas been examined,re- uli such as clicks (e.g., McConchie& Rutschmann,1971), call has typically been at one point in time. Despite this, electrical current (e.g., Ekman, Frankenhaüser, Levan- there have been many conclusionsdrawn about the causal der, & Mellis, 1966), a moving spot (e.g., Rachlin,1966), relations between elapsed time and autobiographical music (e.g., Kowal, 1987), and performance of a mathe- memory processes. In particular, research on the retrieval matical task (e.g., Burnside, 1971). of the time of an event’s occurrence has devoted consid- In contrast to this laboratory research there is a limited erable effort to identifying how error patterns might vary number of studies that have required individuals to esti- with event age and what processes might explain such er- mate the duration of everyday events.Schneider, Griffith, rors. The research reported in this paper examined tem- Sumi, and Burcart (1978) asked crime victims to estimate poral memory error patterns and tested theories of tem- the time it took for the police to arrive at the crime scene poral memory using a within-subjects repeated measures and found estimates were generally longer than those design that provides a unique view of the influence of recorded. Baddeley, Lewis, and Nimmo-Smith (1978) elapsed time on temporal memory. A group of diarists asked members of an experimental psychology research whose memory for events was first examined in 1987– panel to recall the duration of previous visits to the lab- 1988 (referred to as Test 1) was contacted and retested in oratory and reported estimates that were not significantly 1997–1998 (referred to as Test 2). Their abilityin the two different from the actual durations. Douglas and Blom- tests to estimate the duration of their experiences and date field (1956) used hospital records to assess the accuracy when events occurred is compared. of mothers’ recall of the duration of their child’shospital- Two temporal aspects of memory were central to this ization.A correlation of .94 was found between actualand study: the estimationof event duration and the retrieval of estimated duration. Mednick and Shaffer (1963) com- pared pediatricians’ records with mothers’ estimates of their breast-feeding duration and found a tendency to- This research was supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund ward overestimation.Pyles, Stolz, and MacFarlane (1935) (MS1012). We thank Rich Marsh, Charles Thompson, and anonymous used archival records obtained from hospitals, physicians, reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript. Cor- respondence should be addressed to C. D. B. Burt, Department of Psy- and public health nurses to assess the accuracy of moth- chology, University of Canterbury,Private Bag 4800,Christchurch, NZ ers’ estimates of the duration of labor, obtained approx- (e-mail: [email protected]). imately 21 months after birth. A correlation of .61 was 127 Copyright 2001 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 128 BURT, KEMP, AND CONWAY obtained between estimates of duration of labor and re- timates. Some variation might be expected if loss of corded duration. memory for an event reduced the ability to adjust esti- The initial (Test 1) examination of the duration esti- mated duration for atypical event characteristics. How- mation abilitiesof the participantsin this study (e.g., Burt, ever, this might be compensated for by the extra years of 1992a) used autobiographical events and compared esti- experience,which may have increased knowledgeof typ- mates with records showing the actual duration of the ical event duration and thus made reconstructed esti- events. That work, and a number of subsequent studies mates more accurate, particularlywhere actual event du- (e.g., Burt 1993, 1999; Burt & Kemp, 1991, 1994; Burt ration was typical. & Popple, 1996) concluded that duration estimation for We turn now to event date estimation. A number of everyday events involved considerablereconstructivepro- studies have used single-word or phrase prompts to fa- cessing.The reconstructionof event duration is suggested cilitate the recall of specific autobiographical events and to begin with the classification of the target event as be- then requested that each event be dated (e.g., Crovitz & longing to a particular category. This classification pro- Schiffman, 1974; Fitzgerald, 1981; Fitzgerald & Law- vides access to general knowledgethat the individualhas rence, 1984; Holding, Noonan, Pfau, & Holding, 1986; regarding the typical characteristics of that type of event. Pillemer, Goldsmith, Panter, & White, 1988; Pillemer, For events that have a typical duration (e.g., a holiday Rhinehart,& White, 1986). A difficulty with this method normally lasts for a specific period of time), this tempo- is the inability to compare estimated dates with the true ral attribute would probably be available.It was shown in dates, as these are not known. This difficulty essentially Burt and Kemp (1991) that increased experience with an precludes the examination of dating error patterns. In con- event category reduced the between-subjects variation in trast, the studies by Barclay and Wellman (1986); Bruce duration estimates, suggesting that with experience indi- and Van Pelt (1989); Burt (1992b); Larsen and Thompson viduals tend to agree more as to the typical duration of (1995); Linton (1975); Thompson (1982, 1985a, 1985b); particular types of events. The accuracy of reconstructed Thompson, Showronski, and Betz (1993); Thompson, duration estimates that are based on retrieval of typical Showronski, and Lee (1988); Wagenaar (1986); and event duration was shown in Burt (1993) to depend on the White (1982) achieved verification of actual event dates typicality of actual event duration and the individual’s by using diary records. Other studies have used archival abilityto use his/her memory of the event to adjust his/her records to determinethe participant’sinvolvementin, and reconstructed estimate for atypical event characteristics. the precise actual date of, the events to be dated (Badde- Such an explanation of the role of event memory in ley et al., 1978; Loftus & Fathi, 1985). Finally, there is a duration estimation is in contrast to a number of other large body of dating research that has used public events models of duration estimation, the most dominant of (e.g., Brown, Rips, & Shevell, 1985; Brown, Shevell, & which are Ornstein’s(1969) storage size hypothesis and Rips, 1986; Ferguson & Martin, 1983; Friedman & Wil- Block and Reed’s (1978) contextual change hypothesis. kins, 1985; Kemp, 1987, 1988; Kemp & Burt, 1998; The storage size hypothesis suggests that the amount of Perlmutter, Metzger, Miller, & Nezworski, 1980). Al- information that is stored in memory about an interval is though the events in this research are not autobiograph- positively related to how long that interval is estimated ical, the results show considerable consistency with the to be. In contrast, Block and Reed argued that estimated autobiographical data. duration is related to the number of stimulus changes oc- Two dating error patterns have consistentlybeen iden- curring within an interval. A number of laboratory stud- tified. Dating error increases as retention interval in- ies have supported these models, finding that an interval creases (e.g., Barclay & Wellman, 1986; Burt, 1992b; that contains complex, unfamiliar, less predictable, or Friedman & Wilkins, 1985; Linton, 1975; Perlmutter et al., more numerous componentsis generally estimated to be 1980; Thompson, 1982, 1985a, 1985b; Thompson et al., significantly longer than an interval of similar duration 1988), and the sign of the event dating error—that is, containing
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