Nature Of Autobiographical Memory Research Articles

Nature and Effects of Autobiographical Memory Issues in Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

This comprehensive thematic review focuses on autobiographical memory (AM) in individuals with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the overarching aim of informing and instructing stakeholders on this important memory structure that is often compromised in individuals with ASD. Accordingly, articles that best address the theme were selected from legitimate publishers with prime peer-reviewed journals. ASD is recognized as a neurodevelopmental disorder, often impacting on many aspects of language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Considerable research has documented the problems children and adults with ASD frequently exhibit in language and its offshoots, the development of executive function, and theory of mind or the ability to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of self and others. These studies resulted in numerous assessments and intervention strategies designed to target the noted issues, among them problems with AM. Specialists in a variety of medical, psychological, and educational fields are exploring the nature and development of AM across the lifespan and the effects of AM weaknesses on cognitive and social-emotional factors such as self-regulation, social interactions, and self-identity. Researchers are reporting on the nature of AM deficits in persons with ASD and how AM deficits interact with or may explain other difficulties exhibited by these persons, but to date, little of this research has been incorporated into assessment and intervention strategies for persons with ASD. The aims of this article are to: 1. Describe the nature of AM, 2. Expound on assessments of AM, 3. Explain the effects of deficits in AMs on the personal narratives, self-regulation, and self-identity of persons with ASD, and 4. Explore intervention strategies to facilitate AM and the abilities of persons with ASD to tell coherent personal narratives.

Losing the Life: A Review on Autobiographical Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common type of dementia among older adults, is a progressive and neurodegenerative brain disease. AD is characterized by progressive memory impairments, but not other types of dementia. Autobiographical memory (AM) is defined as episodes recollected from individuals’ life, and it is one of the memory systems impaired in AD. One consequence of AM decline in AD is difficulties in the retrieval of recent AMs rather than past ones. AM contains both episodic and semantic components, and it is crucial for self-concept. The aim of the present study is to review the current understanding of AM in people with AD. In the introduction part of the review, AD and its cognitive correlates are presented in detail, with how AM performance is important for the self. In the second part of the review, AM deteriorations in patients with AD are discussed. Factors, such as emotion and olfaction, affecting AM are mentioned along with the neural substrates. In this regard, the effect of the emotional dimension (e.g., valence) on the formation and retrieval of AMs is discussed and how AM is studied with olfactory stimuli is presented, respectively. Studies on the link between AM and emotion have shown that there is a positive shift of AM in AD, indicating that patients with AD remember their AMs more positively. In addition, olfactory stimuli evoke more AMs than verbal and visual stimuli. The conclusion section of the current review is devoted to some recommendations that might guide future research. For instance, stage-by-stage investigation of AM in AD and the comparison of them in relation to relevant variables could be one way of providing detailed findings on the nature of AM in AD.

Differentiating Real-World Autobiographical Experiences without Recourse to Behaviour.

Investigating human consciousness based on brain activity alone is a key challenge in cognitive neuroscience. One of its central facets, the ability to form autobiographical memories, has been investigated through several fMRI studies that have revealed a pattern of activity across a network of frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobe regions when participants view personal photographs, as opposed to when they view photographs from someone else’s life. Here, our goal was to attempt to decode when participants were re-experiencing an entire event, captured on video from a first-person perspective, relative to a very similar event experienced by someone else. Participants were asked to sit passively in a wheelchair while a researcher pushed them around a local mall. A small wearable camera was mounted on each participant, in order to capture autobiographical videos of the visit from a first-person perspective. One week later, participants were scanned while they passively viewed different categories of videos; some were autobiographical, while others were not. A machine-learning model was able to successfully classify the video categories above chance, both within and across participants, suggesting that there is a shared mechanism differentiating autobiographical experiences from non-autobiographical ones. Moreover, the classifier brain maps revealed that the fronto-parietal network, mid-temporal regions and extrastriate cortex were critical for differentiating between autobiographical and non-autobiographical memories. We argue that this novel paradigm captures the true nature of autobiographical memories, and is well suited to patients (e.g., with brain injuries) who may be unable to respond reliably to traditional experimental stimuli.

Integration of waking experience through dreams considered in light of individual differences in implicit learning ability.

The present study explored whether individual differences in implicit learning were related to the incorporation of waking events into dreams. Participants (N=60) took part in a sequence learning task, a measure of implicit learning ability. They were then asked to keep a record of their waking experiences (personally significant events [PSEs]/major concerns), as well as their nightly dreams for a week. Of these, the responses of 51 participants were suitable for further analysis in which participants themselves and three independent judges rated the correlation between waking events and dreams of the same day. Implicit learning ability was found to significantly correlate with the incorporation of PSEs into dreams. The present results may lend support to the Horton and Malinowski autobiographical memory (AM) model, which accounts for the activation of memories in dreams as a reflection of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes that focusses in particular on the hyperassociative nature of AM during sleep.

Evidence of memory from brain data.

Much courtroom evidence relies on assessing witness memory. Recent advances in brain imaging analysis techniques offer new information about the nature of autobiographical memory and introduce the potential for brain-based memory detection. In particular, the use of powerful machine-learning algorithms reveals the limits of technological capacities to detect true memories and contributes to existing psychological understanding that all memory is potentially flawed. This article first provides the conceptual foundation for brain-based memory detection as evidence. It then comprehensively reviews the state of the art in brain-based memory detection research before establishing a framework for admissibility of brain-based memory detection evidence in the courtroom and considering whether and how such use would be consistent with notions of justice. The central question that this interdisciplinary analysis presents is: if the science is sophisticated enough to demonstrate that accurate, veridical memory detection is limited by biological, rather than technological, constraints, what should that understanding mean for broader legal conceptions of how memory is traditionally assessed and relied upon in legal proceedings? Ultimately, we argue that courtroom admissibility is presently a misdirected pursuit, though there is still much to be gained from advancing our understanding of the biology of human memory.

Evidence of Memory from Brain Data

Much courtroom evidence relies on assessing witness memory. Recent advances in brain imaging analysis techniques offer new information about the nature of autobiographical memory, and introduce the potential for brain-based memory detection. In particular, the use of powerful machine learning algorithms reveals the limits of technological capacities to detect true memories, and contributes to existing psychological understanding that all memory is potentially flawed. This Article first provides the conceptual foundation for brain-based memory detection as evidence. It then comprehensively reviews of the state of the art in brain-based memory detection research before establishing a framework for admissibility of brain-based memory detection evidence in the courtroom and considering whether and how such a use would be consistent with notions of justice. The central question that this interdisciplinary analysis presents is: if the science is sophisticated enough to demonstrate that accurate, veridical memory detection is limited by biological, rather than technological, constraints, what should that understanding mean for broader legal conceptions of how memory is traditionally assessed and relied upon in legal proceedings? Ultimately, we argue that courtroom admissibility is presently a misdirected pursuit, though there is still much to be gained from advancing our understanding of the biology of human memory.

A review of adolescent autobiographical memory and the implications for assessment of unaccompanied minors' refugee determinations.

The number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) is increasing, and unlike those who arrive with their parents, UASC are subject to interview to determine refugee status. The limited amount of objective evidence available in most asylum claims means that the UASC's account of their experiences often becomes key in deciding whether or not the young person is granted protection. Research indicates that assumptions about human memory influence decision-makers' views on asylum seekers' accounts; however, these do not necessarily appear to fit with the published research on autobiographical memory and may lead to an unfair decision. Therefore, understanding the nature and limitations of autobiographical memory is key to a fair refugee determination process. A literature review of published research on autobiographical memory among adolescents was undertaken across four databases. In total, 45 papers were identified which were thematically organised into three areas: development of autobiographical memory, contextual influences and impact of psychopathology. From this review, conclusions are drawn about what can be reasonably expected of an adolescent's autobiographical memory generally and more specifically when the unique characteristics of UASC are taken into account. We also discusss how commonly used credibility indicators in refugee status determinations for minors are problematic in light of this research. It is important that the psychological evidence on the nature of autobiographical memory in adolescents is considered in asylum processing of UASC.

Autobiographical memory and hyperassociativity in the dreaming brain: implications for memory consolidation in sleep.

In this paper we argue that autobiographical memory (AM) activity across sleep and wake can provide insight into the nature of dreaming, and vice versa. Activated memories within the sleeping brain reflect one’s personal life history (autobiography). They can appear in largely fragmentary forms and differ from conventional manifestations of episodic memory. Autobiographical memories in dreams can be sampled from non-REM as well as REM periods, which contain fewer episodic references and become more bizarre across the night. Salient fragmented memory features are activated in sleep and re-bound with fragments not necessarily emerging from the same memory, thus de-contextualizing those memories and manifesting as experiences that differ from waking conceptions. The constructive nature of autobiographical recall further encourages synthesis of these hyper-associated images into an episode via recalling and reporting dreams. We use a model of AM to account for the activation of memories in dreams as a reflection of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes. We focus in particular on the hyperassociative nature of AM during sleep.

Dynamics of Autonomy and Relatedness across Lifespan in Autobiographical Narratives: Semantic and Susceptibility

Abstract This paper presents two studies. The first study was designed to determine whether expressions of autonomy and relatedness in autobiographical narrative vary by age of memories and by (sub) cultural specificity within one (Russian) language sample. In the first study, 40 older women were asked to tell “the story of life”. Half of the participants had lived their lives in rural areas of Russia and half were life-long city dwellers. Verbal markers of autonomy and relatedness were coded we have found that they are represented in narratives dynamically. In the rural sample in contrast with the rest of their past participants recollected their childhood and old age as individualistic. In the urban sample in contrast with the rest of their past participants recollected their childhood as collectivistic. To examine what happens to early memories if a person changes cultural context in youth we carried out the second study. We interviewed 20 old female participants who were born in village and moved into big city about 18-20 y.o. They experienced their childhood as rural subjects but recollected it as urban subjects. It supports the main view on constructive nature of autobiographical memory, which reshapes distant memories in accordance with working self's values.

The effect of regulation goals on emotional event-specific knowledge

The constructivist nature of autobiographical memory leaves its retrieval susceptible to biases based on the current context. The present study addressed the hypothesis that the same memory could be recalled differently depending on a person's current regulation goals. In Experiment 1, a total of 58 participants recalled three events at a baseline session and again 2 weeks later when expecting to meet with an emotional individual. Individuals expecting to meet with a happy individual decreased the negative—and more specifically sad—words they used compared to the baseline session, whereas those expecting to meet with a sad individual showed the reverse effect. These findings were constrained by individual differences in extraversion. Significant effects were confined to events recalled second in order, suggesting the changes in emotional details might be due to controlled, regulatory processes. Using a false memory list-learning paradigm, Experiment 2 ruled out an alternative interpretation of the findings and confirmed that individuals can bias their memory in accord with regulation goals.

Imagination Inflation and Implicit Memory Theories

Initially, 70 undergraduates indicated the likelihood that a number of events had happended to them before the age of 10. They also answered a set of questions concerning their beliefs about the nature of autobiographical memory. As per Garry et al.'s imagination inflation methodology [1], target events that were rated unlikely to have occurred were selected to be imagined three weeks later by some participants and to serve as control items for other participants. Following this imagination, participants were told that their initial ratings had been misplaced and were asked to provide a likelihood rating for each event again. Increases in judged likelihood were significantly greater for imagined events than for not-imagined events and the more skeptical a participant was about the credibility of autobiographical memory, the greater the increases in his/her ratings were. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms for imagination inflation.

Individual and Cultural Reality Monitoring

What is the relationship between our perceptions, memories, knowledge, beliefs, and expectations, on one hand, and reality, on the other? Studies of individual cognition show that distortions may occur as a by-product of normal reality-monitoring processes. Characterizing the conditions that increase and decrease such distortions has implications for understanding, for example, the nature of autobiographical memory, the potential suggestibility of child and adult eyewitnesses, and recent controversies about the recovery of repressed memories. Confabulations and delusions associated with brain damage, along with data from neuroimaging studies, indicate that the frontal regions of the brain are critical in normal reality monitoring. The author argues that reality monitoring is fundamental not only to individual cognition but also to social/cultural cognition. Social/cultural reality monitoring depends on institutions, such as the press and the courts, that function as our cultural frontal lobes. Where does normal social/cultural error in reality monitoring end and social/cultural pathology begin?

Walking in our own footsteps: Autobiographical memories and the teaching of geography

This paper examines the nature of autobiographical memories relating to experiences of learning geography in school. After discussing the characteristics of such memories and the extent to which they can be distinguished from other types of memory, some examples of autobiographical memories, drawn from the experiences of a group of geography education tutors and student geography teachers, are presented for analysis. In an attempt to assess the significance of such memories, a possible link between autobiographical memories, the imagination and the needs of young people in school is explored. Is it possible to use the nature, range and vividness of autobiographical memories, as they relate to geographical education in school, as an indicator of the quality of that education? Some suggestions for further research are offered.