Module 9: Autobiographical Memories

Autobiographical memories

Broader memories tied to the self and identify over time, such as a series of events that shape a person’s identify or long term traits (“I’ve always loved playing soccer since I was little

Sensations in auto biological memories

Sensations, perceptions, metacognitive judgements, emotions, actions

Functions

Directive function- can be used to know how to resolve a problem based on how it was resolved previously, present in the advice parents give to their kids; autobiographical memories; social function- when something we see as important for ourselves happened, we want to share it with others, empathy, to understand who we are in a context of a lot of people; self function- events make up who we are, they are a “database of self”, who we are, what we have been, and what we think we will be

Subjectivities

Our interpretation, culture we grew up in- culture sets expectations and then teaches us how to interpret information as well

Contextual complexities

Memories of personal events will be always embedded in a particular context and tied to some set of personal goals of the time, this can influence the quality of encoding the event; for events that are ordinary and routine, the memory of the event will probably include less visual and emotional information : if event is life threatening, then it can produce vivid, emotional memories that many return

Structure of autobiological memories

Memories include grouped information about personal events; organized by time(chronological) or level of emotion, Pollyanna Principle

Positive events are remembered better

Pollyanna Principle

Conway’s Self Memory System

System to describe the organization and structure of autobiographical memories

Conway’s perspective

Autobiological memories belong to a self memory system that has two major components: working self and autobiolographical knowledge

Working self

Perspective we have on ourselves today, our sense of who we are and what we to become; to limit what we spend time thinking about, so that we think more about our goals

Autobiolographical knowledge base

Information grouped by lifetime periods, the most broad category and general events

Developmental changes in autobiographical memories

Ability to form and retain autobiological memories appears to change over the course of our lives

Changes studied for autobiological memories over a life time

Changes to average properties of the memories one stores; changes in how autobiological memories are used over time

Developmental Changes in Autobiological memories

Development of language is important for development of autobiological memories-language helps us develop a story; when we are younger, as a result of that, its worse and then slowly our memories get better after we develop the ability to use language; as kids, the memories are just personal event memories alone, then we get better at linking these memories into a story (i.e. autobiological memories)

Developmental requires for autobiological memories

Children need to have the following: form a representation of themselves(“concept of self”), understand their internal states as tied to their actions, understand that others have internal states that may or may not be the same; development of languages, theory of mind, ability to build the perspective of others and make links between them overtime; personal timeline(understanding of calendar AND of important events in on one’s culture)- develops after preschool years; personal timeline

Personal timeline

Being able to identify a timeline of events that happen to you and not having everything be “tomorrow” or “yesterday”; develops in the middle of childhood and adolescence

Developmental timeline

Between ages seven and eleven: length/complexity of the narratives increase, amount of information in memory almost doubles, chronological order gets better; Between ages ten and twelve: children improve at telling information to listeners about when/where the event occurred; Adolescence: the memories stories include an extended life narrative

Autobiographical memories with aging

Details get lost as people age, sometimes older people will only share information that is relatable to the listener, thus not rehearsing/remembering the other parts

Left hemisphere

Retrieval of autobiographical memories begins here

Prefrontal cortex

necessary for sense of memory being in relation to ourselves- for self reference

Controlled attention to the memory- paying attention to the memory

Dorsal parietal cortex

Gender differences

Women have longer, more detailed memories; better at dating memories and at recalling them