Memory and Society

Psychological Perspectives

Lars-Goran Nilsson, Nobuo Ohta, Lars-Goran Nilsson, Nobuo Ohta

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135420086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología cognitiva y cognición

Memory and Society explores the social factors which influence human memory and our conceptualisation of memory. It examines the relationships between memory, society and culture and considers the relevance of theories of memory to real world issues.

The opening section deals with the topic of autobiographical memory. It looks at the role of the self; how the self is shaped by society but also how it is the self which encodes and constructs memories. The Reconstructive nature of episodic memory is considered and how the present acts as the basis for remembering the past, with the rememberer's beliefs, desires and interpretations playing a central role.

The middle section looks at the influence of the social environment on learning. It debates the relevance of the application of basic principles gained in laboratory settings to learning and memory in social settings. These principles are used to throw light on topics such as e-learning, eyewitness testimonies and optimal treatment and thinking. Moreover, these real world scenarios are themselves used to throw light on basic principles and how they can be improved.

The final section looks at the social consequences and costs of memory deficits, covering normal aging and pathological changes in old age, memory deficits related to dyslexia, working memory problems in everyday cognition, problems in executive functions in chronic alcoholics, and Korsakoff amnesics. It also examines methods of rehabilitation for everyday life.

Incorporating contributions from leading international authorities in memory research, as well as new data and ideas for the direction of future research, this book will be invaluable to psychologists working in the fields of memory and society.

Part I
Self, society, and culture

Lars-Göran Nilsson and Nobuo Ohta

Important memory research is presently being carried out in many laboratories all over the world. Most of this research is directed to the understanding of the structure and function of different forms of memory. This is not an undertaking for cognitive psychologists alone. Scientists from other disciplines are deeply involved as well. Experts on brain imaging techniques and genetics often collaborate with cognitive psychologists in trying to understand memory of the individual at a basic neurobiological level.

Acknowledging the importance of this neuroscientific approach to memory, the present book will point out some other directions that are also of importance for understanding memory, but often neglected in cognitive neuroscience of memory. These other directions often include factors that are much broader than those dealt with in cognitive neuroscience. In one way or another they are related to the society we live in and the general culture that the society is embedded in. At present, such factors are ignored in the neuro-scientific approach to memory. Only the future will tell whether any joint enterprise will be possible in the study of such a multifacorial component of the human mind as memory.

The purpose of this book is to bring forward other factors influencing memory, emphasizing factors in society that influence memory. In the first chapter of this first section of the book, Wang and Conway describe the role of self in episodic remembering. As the authors show, including self as a concept in memory theory leads naturally to the insight that society and culture come to play important roles in understanding memory. This domain of episodic remembering goes under the general umbrella term of autobiographical memory. Conway and his colleagues have made important contributions to the understanding of memory by emphasizing the concept of self in autobiographical memory. Self-consciousness has long been conceived of as one unique feature of episodic memory. The notion of self is a way to conceptualize this feature of episodic memory. According to Wang and Conway the self is shaped by society and it is the self that encodes and constructs memories. Autobiographical memory grounds the self in remembered reality. Memory is viewed as the database of the self. Along with others, Wang and Conway conceive of the self as developed, expressed, and reconstructed through narrative creations of the past with temporal and causal dimensions.

A key notion in the chapter by Wang and Conway is that the present forms the basis for remembering the past. Memories of past events are often changed to fit the present and this is a process conceived of as being guided by the self. Wang and Conway illustrate the model proposed with data about childhood amnesia, the reminiscence bump and attachment. Wang and Conway part company with mainstream cognitive neuroscience on explanations in memory research when stating that the impact of the self on personal remembering does not occur in the mind or in the brain but in the context of socio-cultural participation. During such participation individuals actively construct their life stories guided by their culture’s presuppositions and perspectives about the self. Wang and Conway review some interesting differences in both self and memory on the basis of cultural differences and propose that early social-linguistic environments are an important source from which children learn to construct life stories in culturally canonical forms. Cultural goals of the family and the society form the beliefs about the purpose of personal remembering. Wang and Conway conclude that the cultural similarities and differences they describe in accessibility, content, and lifespan distribution of autobiographical memory rule out any simple explanation in terms of self, and instead suggest a complex relation between the nature of the self, memory, and culture.

In the same way as Wang and Conway, Joslyn and Schooler argue that the present forms the basis for remembering the past. They suggest a model for memory of previously unremembered life events like abuse. The phenomenon of all of a sudden being able to remember a sexual abuse that occurred a long time ago has been a hot topic in theory and practice for quite some time, and it still is. How can it be possible not to remember such an event for many years and then at a given moment manage to do so? In Freudian terms, some have argued that these memories were repressed in the meantime, in order for the abused person to be able to cope with the fact that the shocking event has occurred. With the help of psychotherapists of various kinds, the abused person has then been able to unlock the repression.

Joslyn and Schooler use a conceptual framework from memory research to explain how it is possible to remember a previously unremembered abusive event. Their key approaches for this are shifts of perspective and a reinterpretation of what a sexual abuse is. They argue that changing the perspective on what to categorize as a sexual abuse can enhance memory by bringing forward additional details. Joslyn and Schooler review two questionnaire studies showing that a large majority of respondents who had reported unwanted sexual experiences as children excluded themselves from belonging to the category of people who had been sexually abused. Despite the fact that they regarded an abstract description of an event as sexual abuse, they did not consider the same event as sexual abuse when personally experienced. Joslyn and Schooler also suggest that poorly categorized events may be recalled less often simply because they are less well connected to autobiographical memory as a whole and hence are accessible by fewer retrieval paths, which is pretty much in line with the thesis put forward by Wang and Conway in their chapter. On the basis of case-study data, Joslyn and Schooler also point out an important methodological issue in questionnaire data that should be seriously considered, namely that the order in which questions are asked can meaningfully impact the responses that individuals provide. Joslyn and Schooler argue that memory for sexual abuse falls into a special category of memory because memories of such social interactions undergo changes in interpretation throughout life more than memory of other social interactions and events. This may certainly be so, but the model proposed by Joslyn and Schooler may provide a good framework for understanding any kind of memory that is now highly salient but was previously forgotten.

Memory is no longer conceived of as a storehouse in which one can search for the event to be remembered and then simply read out from this event if it is found there. Rather, memory is reconstructive and the rememberer’s beliefs, desires and interpretations play a major role in this reconstruction. The chapters by Wang and Conway, and Joslyn and Schooler provide strong evidence for this. Lindsay and Read approach the reconstructive notion in their chapter in that they claim that many memory theorists still overestimate the completeness of autobiographical memory and underestimate human susceptibility to reconstructive errors regarding long-past autobiographical events. By this they mean that the episodic information has not disappeared from the brain, the information is still available, but because effective cues are lacking these reconstructive errors occur. The methods used for studying memories of long-past events are based on people’s diaries, childhood memories questionnaires, adults’ memories of high school, and childhood photographs and false memories and the interview has been the method used to collect data from these sources. Lindsay and Read review the advantages and disadvantages of these methods in a clear way. The overall finding of studies on memory for long-past events, using these methods, is that autobiographical memory is incomplete and easily susceptible to suggestion. One limitation of diary and questionnaire methods is that it is difficult to know whether a certain memory reported actually occurred, but it is interesting to note that participants in these studies frequently report that they had completely forgotten a certain event although this event should, it seems, have affected their lives considerably. These findings have various implications worth noting. For one thing, despite the fact that most people seem to believe that they know their past, at least the most important things in that past, these results show that autobiographical memory is rather incomplete. Another aspect that these data implicate at a more societal level, Lindsay and Read argue, is that it is extremely unwise to assume that an incomplete memory of childhood is indicative of abuse.

The final chapter in this first section of the book by Pezdek is about memory for the traumatic events occurring in New York on 11 September 2001. Pezdek assessed memory for September 11 seven weeks after the event in five samples that varied in their involvement in the event. There were: (1) college students from Manhattan in New York; (2) college students from California; (3) college students from Hawaii; (4) flight attendants from United and American Airlines; and (5) fire fighters from California. Pezdek reports several interesting findings from the study. Perhaps the most interesting of them all is that episodic memory of the events occurring was most accurate in the most involved New York sample whereas autobiographical memory was least accurately reported in this sample. Pezdek interprets these data as showing that the emotional response to the experience was more likely to be attached to the external event than to participants’ autobiographical experience of the event. Thus, the external event was more likely to be narratively rehearsed and subsequently more accurately recalled, especially by participants more directly involved. Pezdek’s overall conclusion is that it is the synergy of arousal and rehearsal that affects memory for traumatic events.

A common theme in the four chapters of this first section of the book is of course the interest in the specific features of autobiographical memory. However, the four chapters also seem to converge on the notion that memory of the past is based on how the individual conceives of the present, and that this conceptualization of the present is built up in a narrative way throughout life – perhaps in much the same way that a society or a culture is built up by oral or written narrative in that society (Rubin, 1995). Although articles on autobiographical memory often describe dramatic events like sexual abuse and terrorist attacks, the self for most people is built up of rather mundane happenings in the family in conversations at the dinner table, reflections before going to sleep, positive, negative, or mostly neutral events at work. But it is these kinds of moments that make up a life, just like the steady attempts to go on in a society that make up a culture.

Reference

Rubin, D. C. (1995). Memory in oral traditions. New York: Oxford University Press.

1 Autobiographical memory, self, and culture

Qi Wang and Martin A. Conway

In this chapter we outline some of our recent work on autobiographical memory in different cultures. The striking similarities and differences that we and others have observed reflect the way in which the focus of the self is shaped by society and, subsequently, how the self encodes and constructs memories in culturally canonical fashions. Our perspective derives from our view of autobiographical memory in which memory is regarded as the database of the self.

Autobiographical memory grounds the self in remembered reality, it constrains what the self can be and in turn is itself constrained by what we call the working self, which modulates access to memories. Of especial importance in this model is the notion of motivation or goals, which are viewed as a central component of the working self. It is the highly active complex hierarchy of working self goals that profoundly influences memory accessibility and content and it is this model that we briefly outline first (full accounts can be found in Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Conway & Holmes, 2003; or Conway, in press). We then discuss the manifestation of the working self during remembering as exemplified in the phenomena of childhood amnesia, reminiscence bump, and attachment. Then we turn to cross-cultural data to demonstrate how motivation and goals of the working self are rooted in a culture’s belief systems, which prioritize some self goals over others. This, in turn, determines which memories and which aspects of the memories are most likely to be accessible and enduring.

Self-memory system model of autobiographical remembering

According to this view long-term memory contains autobiographical memory knowledge structures that are conceptual or semantic in nature. Autobiographical knowledge can be used to access ep...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Harmony between principle-seeking and problem-solving research
• Part I Self, society, and culture
• Part II Learning in social settings
• Part III Memory deficits: Social costs
• Author index
• Subject Index