Autobiographical Memory

There are two forms of autobiographical memory proposed by Williams in 1999. These are:

1. Personal Semantic Memory: These are the facts one knows about oneself
2. Episodic Memory: These are memories of the event from ones life. Episodic memory includes information about the emotional experience as well as the factual details of the event.

Hierachical Structure of the autobiographical memory self-memory system:

(Conway 2000; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000)

1. General: These are about lifetime periods, for example 'when i was a t university'
2. Intermediate: This refers to general events and can include extended or single events such as a specific holiday, or categorical or repeated events such as shopping.
3. Specific: This relates to event specific knowledge including images, feelings. These are in temporal order.

Routes of retrieval of autobiographical memories - Berntsen, 1998

There are two routes of retrieval for autobiographical memories. These are

1. Direct. These are involuntary recalls of memories and can be assessed by diary records. Some cues may spontaneously lead to the direct activation of specific event memories.
2. General. This is a voluntary process which can be assessed by presenting cues. It is a strategic process that is mediated by the central executive. Williams (1996) suggested the process by which this happens:

a. An intermediate Description is created that describes the information that is to be recalled.

b. The ID/intermediate description is used to search for a specific autobiographical memory.

c. Contextual Information is added to the memory search. This requires the inhibition of the intermediate description.

d. This voluntary retrieval is disrupted by depression.

Lifetime memories

These are types of memory from different life stages:

• Retention function: this is for memories up to 20 years old. Older memories are less likely to be recalled than recent ones.
• Infantile amnesia: These is almost a total lack of memories from the first 3 years of life.
• Reminiscence Bump: This describes memories from age 10 to 30. There is a particularly large amount of these, especially from age 15 to 25

Infantile Amnesia

Howe and Courage (1997) related infantile amnesia to the emergence of a 'cognitive self'. They said that advances in cognitive development occur at around 20 to 24 months. This is when visual self recognition takes place through touching and smiling, as well as the use of personal pronouns. This is when there is an emergence in autobiographical memory, and signals the end of infantile amnesia. This also assumes that there are very few autobiographical memories between age 2 and 5, as rehearsal must take place.

Rubin, in 2000, supported this theory, and found that only 22% of the autobiographical memories from the first 10 years, came from ages 2-5

Reminiscence Bump

Rubin et al., in 1998 identified novelty and stability as being important factors in determining the strength of memories

• Novelty - first time experiences. These are often distinctive and accessible memories. They have less or lowered proactive interference.
• Stability - These memories are usually from early adulthood and stable periods.

Conway and Pleydell-Pearce (2000) said that 'the reminiscence bump reflects the preferential retention of events from a period of consolidation of the self'. They considered that the self and personal goals do not change very much after age 30.