Recall

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“The concept of identity as a life-long process of construction and reconstruction, a continuous rewriting the text of one’s identity, has become the underlying idea of many research projects” (Brockmeier, 2000, p. 55).

Following encoding, recall sorts through for the autobiographical memories to present in the narrative. This judgment allows for memory alteration. During retrospective judgment, routine tasks are perceived as shorter since no highly salient markers are encoded, ridding of this chronological time from autobiographical time (Avni-Babad & Ritove, 2003). However, prospective judgment caused individuals’ attention to be drawn to time; less attention is necessary for routine tasks so more can be devoted to time. These opposing forces, though, can have the same effect on routine events. With less time perceived of routine events, the timeline of life seems shorter—an unwanted consequence, as there can only be so much time spent on Earth. At the same time, the increased attention given to time during routine events means that the individual becomes more aware of the time wasted on old experiences—also an unwanted feeling. Routine events, then, have less significance to autobiographical time. Other events can be weighed in the same manner; any that is less significant to the makeup of the individual—their autobiographical identity—is disregarded from autobiographical time.