Everyday Remembering Flashcards
(18 cards)
Every day memory approach
Correspondence metaphors
Memories of older, rehearsed memories
Learning = often incidental
Focus of relevance
Purposeful action
Neisser: believed everyday memory is based on action that’s:
- purposeful
- has personal quality > influenced by individuals personality
- influenced by situational demand
Episodic memory
- memory for past events in our lives- what, where, when
- human ability only
- involves:
— ability to travel back in time in our minds
— coupled with awareness that were doing so
Autobiographical memory
- represent subject of episodic memories
- ## represents episodic memories that serve function of; defining identity, supporting personal goals etc
Similarities + differences of Episodic and Autobiographical memories
Episodic:
- personal expertises that happened at given time, in specific place
Autobiographical:
- memories reacting to our personal past, our experiences + ppl important to us
Construction of autobiographical memory
Contains personal information at 3 levels of specifity:
- Lifetime periods
- substantial periods of time
- defined by major, ongoing situations
- thematic + temporal knowledge - General events
- repeated + more general events
- taking place within given lifetime periods - Event- specific knowledge
- images, feelings + others details relating to specific event
- can be located @ particular time/ place
The working self
- refers to set of control process’ operative at given point in time
- autobiographical memories encoded through goal structure of working memory
- encoded events become part of autobiographical memory knowledge
- at retrieval, memories = selectively constructed out of events from knowledge base that are relevant to goals of working self at time or retrieval
How are autobiographical memories cued? Cue word method
Participant retrieves memeory that can be associated with cue word
How are autobiographical memories cued? Important memeory method
Particpant retrieved memeory that they feel represents most important memories of their life
Lifespan distribution of Autobiogrphical memories (3 components):
- Childhood amnesia — no memories until age 3/4
Theories :
- language + culture both central to autobiographical memeory develoment
- pre-linguistic memories = hard to express using language later
-elaboration provides opportunities to rehearse - Reminiscence bump— increase in memories from childhood-adolcents, or adolescence- early adulthood
Theories:
- bump can be attributed to clustering of goal-relevant events occurring during adolescents
- leads to preferential recall of events from this period of time - Recency effect — an increase in memories for the most recent parts of life
Theories:
- each culture possesses its own culturally shared representation of order + timing of major events that are expected to occur in lifespan of typical individual
How does life skirt produces remissince bump?
- acts as cognitive schema regarding most importance events of your life
- structures retrieval of important of autobiographical memories by providing search descriptions for events that are in script
- life scripts produce bump as life script events cluster in adolescence + earful adulthood
Flashbulb memories:
- vivid, long-lasting autobiographical autobiographical meteorites for reception context — how we learn important public events
- such events activate neural mechanism which prints these memories permanently in memeory system
- makes them vivid and durable
Study:
-morning after 9/11 had students record their memory of hearing attack + recent everyday mems
- asked them t rate + record memeory 32 weeks later
- consistency for flashbulb + everyday memory declined over time
- rating of vividness + confidence only declined for everyday memory > stable for flashbulb mems
-
What does 9/11 study suggest about flashbulb memories?
They’re special in terms of their vividness + confidence with which they’re held
Subject to same reconstructive processes as other memory types
Not so momentary as snapshot
Places where we line up out lives with course of history
Cultural differences in remembering
- individuals with autonomous self-construct may be more sensitive to events unique to self
- ppl who focus more on relational aspects of self may be more sensitive to events involving social interactions + collective activities
American and Chinese adults recalling memories study:
- American memories more self-focused
-Chinese focused on social interactions and emotions/ pov of others
Culture and remembering
- many key memories from our lives determined by culturally deprived scripts of ‘typica’ kinds of events that happen in perons life
- age of ones first memeory varies across cultures
- goal-driven nature of AM remembering process > cross-cultural diffenrces
Remembering as social aspect: retelling v recalling
- when ppl recount events from their lives in everyday contexts, they often have different goals than simply accurately describing story
- often knowingly incorporate falsehoods
- falsehoods to entertain, garner sympathy, express pride etc
Consequences of biased retelling
Asked to read story about roommates
Asked to write complaint about 1 or recommendation
When asked to recall story, more likely to recall things about roommate they emphasised in their letter
Gendered reminiscing style
- parents had more elaborative reminiscing style with female offspring
- adult women have more specific memeory styles than adult men
- adult women more likely to recall events associated with emotion
- children earn specific narrate devices, pick up memory styles through social interactions
