autobiographical memory

autobiographical memory

1. personal memories including biographical information and past experiences

2. include factual knowledge - what the memory is about e.g. a holiday - and spatiotemporal knowledge - where and when experience took place e.g. France last year

3. personal interpretation and not necessarily accurate

4. include flashbulb memories - vivid and detailed memories of unexpected events with high emotional content e.g. accident as a child

5. people tend to have a greater number of recent autobiographical memories and memories from between adolescence to 30 (the reminiscence bump)

   • may be due to developing sense of self in relation to social / cultural context as psychosocial theory (Erikson) suggests
     • damage to hippocampus can cuase anterograde amnesia which impairs ability to form new autographical memories e.g. case of HM

6. diary studies e.g. Linton are one way of investigating autobiographical memory

   • she found some memory loss associated with repletion of similar events and no relationship between recall and perceived importance of an event
   • some consistency in diary study results

7. important as a particular type of memory - worthy of investigation in its own right

8. difficult to test other than by diary studies