Autobiographical memory

The term autobiographical memory referred to in psychology, the storing of episodes of major significance for the individual. You will permanently keep and gives a context for the content of episodic memory. The autobiographical and episodic memory have certain intersections, but episodic memory stores rather Recent, unimportant episodes that are forgotten or semantic knowledge. Especially important autobiographical memory is to form their own identity. With the study of autobiographical memory, the everyday memory research is concerned.

• 3.1 Empirical evidence

Contents of autobiographical memory

Infantile amnesia

The autobiographical memory typically includes no memories of the first three years of life. This phenomenon is known as infantile amnesia.

Reminiscence Bump

As Reminiscence Bump ( German: Memorial Hill) on the other hand refers to the phenomenon that older people are able to remember many episodes of her life from the period between 10 and 30 years - particularly from the period between 15 and 25 years. The phenomenon occurs not only on average but also in the consideration of individuals, that is, the majority of people in this phase has the most memory.

The reasons for this "memory hills " are due to the fact that developed during this time the identity. This leads to many new experiences. The fact that they are new, they can be easily distinguished from other episodes ( no proactive interference ) and are well encoded. In addition, the identity stabilized at this age. The result of that experience from this period provide models for the future and the basis for cognitive structure. They thus bring novelty and the stability that exist at this time, most memories.

Accuracy of autobiographical memory

In the memory of autobiographical events often lead to errors:

• Dating of autobiographical memories is based on the amount of remaining available knowledge, that is, events about which we know less, be considered as a last longer.
• The former self is systematically worse than the estimated current self.
• Miss Successful events are further into the past laid as successful.

The last two memory error serve the best possible view of the current selves to have.

Self -memory system of Conway and Pleydell - Pearce

This theory assumes that the information in autobiographical memory can be stored in three different levels of specificity.

The autobiographical memory is closely linked to the self. The self- set goals and is organized hierarchically. A straight active part of the self- intermediate objectives pursued in the interest of achieving the overall objectives of the self. These active components interact with the Autobiographical Memory. You decide what is important and will thus retain, and vice versa affects the Autobiographical memory, of course, the self-concept.

From this follow two different retrieval strategies:

Empirical evidence

• For different levels of specificity: patients with retrograde amnesia could still access periods of life and general events, but no longer on event- specific knowledge
• For the influence of the self on autobiographical memory: Individualistic ( agentic ) people more likely to remember events in which they were active (eg, success ), while collectivist ( communal ) people rather remember relationship bound experiences (love, friendship, etc.). Also, when calling, inter alia, the frontal cortex of the left hemisphere is active, in which the self -related knowledge is suspected.
• For generative retrieval: Autobiographical memories are back slower than other information ( 4s instead of 1s). Autobiographical memories on two separate occasions sometimes differ greatly.
• For the distinction between generative and direct retrieval: In a study should reflect specific autobiographical episodes Group 1 according to specific instructions. Group 2 was prompted uncritically reproduce what just came to mind to autobiographical episodes. The direct retrieval (group 2) led to more memories of event-specific episodes, while group 1 ( generative retrieval ) more episodes of life and general events reported. The contents of the memories of group 2 are unusual, less positive and contain more physical reactions.

Swell

• Eysenck, M. W. & Keane, M. T.: Cognitive Psychology. 5th edition, Psychology Press, Hove, UK, 2005.