cortex xxx (2012) 1e15 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex Special issue: Research report The survey of autobiographical memory (SAM): A novel measure of trait mnemonics in everyday life Daniela J. Palombo a,b, Lynne J. Williams a, Herve´ Abdi c and Brian Levine a,b,d,* a The Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, ON, Canada b Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada c School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA d Department of Medicine (Neurology), University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada article info abstract Article history: Compared to the abundance of laboratory-based memory tasks, few measures exist to Received 12 October 2011 assess self-reported memory function. This need is particularly important for naturalistic Reviewed 15 March 2012 mnemonic capacities, such as autobiographical memory (recall of events and facts from Revised 17 April 2012 one’s past), because it is difficult to reliably assess in the laboratory. Furthermore, natu- Accepted 30 August 2012 ralistic mnemonic capacities may show stable individual differences that evade the Published online xxx constraints of laboratory testing. The Survey of Autobiographical Memory (SAM) was designed to assess such trait mnemonics, or the dimensional characterization of self- Keywords: reported mnemonic characteristics. The SAM comprises items assessing self-reported Autobiographical memory episodic autobiographical, semantic, and spatial memory, as well as future prospection. Declarative memory In a large sample of healthy young adults, the latent dimensional structure of the SAM was Questionnaire characterized with multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). This analysis revealed Recollection dimensions corresponding to general mnemonic abilities (i.e., good vs poor memory across Trait memory subtypes), spatial memory, and future prospection. While episodic and semantic items did not separate in this data-driven analysis, these categories did show expected dissociations in relation to depression history and to laboratory-based measures of recollection. Remote spatial memory as assessed by the SAM showed the expected advantage for males over females. Spatial memory was also related to autobiographical memory performance. Brief versions of the SAM are provided for efficient research applications. Individual differences in memory function are likely related to other health-related factors, including personality, psychopathology, dementia risk, brain structure and function, and genotype. In conjunc- tion with laboratory or performance based assessments, the SAM can provide a useful measure of naturalistic self-report trait mnemonics for probing these relationships. ª 2012 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON M6A 2E1, Canada. E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Levine). 0010-9452/$ e see front matter ª 2012 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.08.023 Please cite this article in press as: Palombo DJ, et al., The survey of autobiographical memory (SAM): A novel measure of trait mnemonics in everyday life, Cortex (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.08.023 2 cortex xxx (2012) 1e15 1. Introduction on individual differences in naturalistic mnemonic capacities. As is the case for personality, memory can be subdivided into The real-life expression of memory involves multiple capac- dimensions or factors. The SAM focuses on elements of long- ities interacting with sensory, perceptual, attentional, and term, remote memory for events, facts, and spatial informa- motor abilities. Cognitive scientists have decomposed these tion; constructs of short-term or working memory are not capacities using memory paradigms to identify specific considered, nor are forms of naturalistic memory such as mnemonic processes or systems. These theoretical contribu- those associated with daily forgetfulness (e.g., memory errors tions, however, have not been matched by advances in their and slips; Broadbent et al., 1982; Sunderland et al., 1984). applications to naturalistic everyday human memory func- The mnemonic dimensions or factors in this study were tion. While laboratory memory tests strive toward ecological derived from evidence of AM capacities that are dissociated validity, none directly address the multi-modal sensory from others based on cognitive, neuroimaging, and neuro- nature of encoding, the importance of self-relevance, and the psychological evidence: episodic AM, semantic memory, recall delay inherent in naturalistic memory, such as auto- spatial memory, and future thinking or prospection. biographical memory (Conway, 2001). Accordingly, studies AM refers to memory for personal events and facts from using naturalistic autobiographical memory (AM) stimuli have one’s life. It has typically been divided into episodic and revealed patterns of spared and impaired mnemonic capac- semantic systems or processes. Episodic AM refers to recol- ities that are not necessarily captured by laboratory analogs lection of personally experienced, temporally- and spatially- (e.g., Levine et al., 1998). Moreover, functional neuroimaging specific events, accompanied by an autonoetic sense of studies have demonstrated different patterns of brain acti- reliving the past (Tulving, 2002). Semantic AM refers to vations associated with autobiographical versus laboratory knowledge about oneself that is not tied to a specific time and memory tasks (Gilboa, 2004; McDermott et al., 2009). place. Episodic and semantic AM are mediated by distinct In contrast to performance-based measures, there has neural systems (Levine, 2004; Maguire, 2001; St-Laurent et al., been very little research on “trait mnemonics”dthat is, 2011; Svoboda et al., 2006) and they can be dissociated in the dimensional characterization (factor structure) of self- patients with brain disease (Conway and Fthenaki, 2000; reported mnemonic characteristicsdwhich we consider to Kapur, 1999; Kopelman et al., 1999; McKinnon et al., 2008). be comparable to personality traits as assessed by self-report Semantic AM is part of semantic memory, which refers to inventories. In this study, we report data concerning a new general knowledge about the world (e.g., that the capital of measure: the Survey of Autobiographical Memory (SAM) that France is Paris). Semantic memory is often considered as represents the first attempt to assess trait mnemonics. The memory system because it can be dissociated from other SAM is designed to assess individual differences in self- memory systems. For example, atrophy in lateral temporal reported autobiographical mnemonic capacities. Such indi- areas, as in semantic dementia, leads to specific deficit of vidual differences are regarded as analogous to individual semantic knowledge (e.g., difficulties with naming) with differences in other neurocognitive processes such as reading relative sparing of other cognitive functions, including and mathematics. Although nearly all adults possess these episodic memory (Hodges et al., 1995). Also, neuroimaging skills, individual differences can be detected at the behavioral studies have specifically linked semantic memory to left (Knopik and DeFries, 1999) and neural levels (Ben-Shachar lateral inferior frontal and temporal areas (Demonet et al., et al., 2007; van Eimeren et al., 2008) and, in some cases, are 1992; Graham et al., 2003; Martin, 2001). associated with genotype (Markowitz et al., 2005). Just as In addition to the episodic and semantic systems, AM can extremely high or low abilities on the spectrum of reading or be characterized by its remote spatial and prospective mathematics has obvious practical significance, so do simi- memory characteristics. Remote spatial memory refers to larly extreme mnemonic capacities (Leport et al., 2012; Parker awareness of previously encoded spatial coordinates that et al., 2006). enable orientation and navigation in previously encountered Recent research has demonstrated large individual settings. These spatial abilities are bound with AM because of differences in laboratory-assessed mnemonic performance the biological importance of the recall of spatial context (Kirchhoff, 2009; Unsworth, 2009a, 2009b). Functional neuro- (Hassabis and Maguire, 2007; O’Keefe and Nadel, 1978; imaging studies show large, reliable inter-individual differ- Tulving, 1983). Accordingly, there is marked overlap between ences in brain activation during episodic memory tasks (Miller brain activation patterns associated with AM and remote et al., 2002). Structural neuroimaging studies have also spatial memory (Buckner and Carroll, 2007; Burgess et al., revealed that individual differences in brain structure, 2001b; Maguire, 1997). Yet, there also is evidence for both particularly white matter integrity, are related to individual behavioral and neuroanatomical dissociation of some types of differences in episodic memory (Fuentemilla et al., 2009; spatial navigation from episodic memory (Aguirre and Rudebeck et al., 2009). In addition, there is rapidly accumu- D’Esposito, 1999; Moscovitch et al., 2005; Rosenbaum et al., lating evidence in support of a genetic basis for these indi- 2000). vidual differences as research has discovered several Prospection or future thinking, while not a form of memory polymorphisms associated with episodic