Reconstructive Memory

9 Key excerpts on "Reconstructive Memory"

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  False-memory Creation in Children and Adults

  Theory, Research, and Implications

  • David F. Bjorklund(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter, we attempt to integrate diverse empirical and theoretical observations concerning constructive memory phenomena from four different areas of research: cognitive studies of young adults, neuropsychological investigations of THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY 127 brain-damaged patients, studies of cognitive aging, and research using brain-imaging techniques. We will begin by sketching a general framework that places the study of constructive memory phenomena in a broader conceptual context. We then examine observations from relevant research domains concerning two major types of memory distortions: (a) false recognition, and (b) intrusions and confabulations. Finally we consider several recent studies concerned with whether false memories can be reduced or suppressed. CONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY: A GENERAL FRAMEWORK Our conceptualization of constructive memory functions, which we will refer to as the constructive memory framework (CMF), draws on notions put forward previously by Johnson et al. (1993), McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995), Moscovitch (1994), Norman and Schacter (1996), and Squire (1992), among others. We begin by noting that representations of new experiences can be conceptualized as patterns of features, with different features representing different facets of the experience: the outputs of perceptual modules that analyze specific physical attributes of incoming information, interpretation of these physical attributes by conceptual or semantic modules, and actions undertaken in response to incoming information (cf. Johnson & Chalfonte, 1994; Metcalfe, 1990; Moscovitch, 1994; Schacter, 1989). Constituent features of a memory representation are distributed widely across different parts of the brain, such that no single location contains a complete record of the trace or engram of a specific experience (Damasio, 1989; Squire, 1992).

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  The Constructive Mind

  Bartlett's Psychology in Reconstruction

  • Brady Wagoner(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  4 Concept of Schema in Reconstruction Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction or con- struction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organised past reactions or experience [i.e., schema], and to a little outstanding detail which commonly appears in image or in language form. (Bartlett, 1932/1995, p. 213) If this view of remembering as a constructive activity is correct, the whole experimental setting of the problems of recall is changed. (Bartlett, 1935, p. 226) No other concept in Bartlett’s oeuvre has generated as much attention as ‘schema,’ except perhaps the related concept ‘reconstruction.’ Psychology is today littered with references to ‘story schema,’ ‘self-schema,’ ‘gender schema,’ ‘event schema,’ and a wide range of other words combined with schema. 1 Add to these the derivative concepts of ‘script’ and ‘frame’ and one begins to get a sense of how widely and variably the concept is used. At a very general level, contemporary psychologists have defined schema as a knowledge structure in the head that is used in the storage of informa- tion. This is somewhat ironic because Bartlett (1932/1995) intended to utilize the concept to develop an alternative to the storage theory of mem- ory. For him, schema was to provide the basis for a theory of remember- ing that was embodied, dynamic, temporal, holistic, and social. Bartlett (1932/1995), however, provided only a hesitant and sketchy account rather than a fully developed theory. This left the concept of schema wide open for reconstruction. Since Bartlett, psychologists of different genera- tions and orientations have assimilated schema into their own frame- works, which Bartlett’s reconstructive schema theory would have itself predicted. This chapter explores the concept of schema’s origins, its place within Bartlett’s thought, and its successive reconstructions by others after him.

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  Performing the Past

  Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe

  • Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, Jay M. Winter, Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, Jay M. Winter(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 Whatever our memories may be worth from a scientific point of view, as human beings we have to rely on them, because they are what makes human beings human. Without this capacity and at least a sense of its reliability, we could not construct a self nor could we communicate with others. Personal memory is the dynamic medium for processing subjective experience and building up a social identity. Though tied to subjective experience and an unalterable stance, personal memories already have a social quality in that they are interactively constructed, and, therefore, always connected with the 40 Performing the past Re-framing memory. Between individual and collective forms of constructing the past 41 memories of others. Unless they are integrated into a narrative, which invests them with shape, significance, and meaning, they are fragmented, presenting only isolated scenes without temporal or spatial continuity. Even if they are anecdotalized and regularly rehearsed or stabilized by material objects, writing, or photographs, they remain volatile and subject to change and fading. Some episodic memories become part of a family memory; however, this also sets clear limits to their temporal duration. Even within that cycle of oral interaction they, as a rule, do not transcend the temporal range of three generations, a span amounting to at most a hundred years. Social memory Although I do not consider ‘collective memory’ a spurious notion, I dislike the term because of its vagueness. To circumvent its vagueness, I prefer to replace it with three different terms: social, political, and cultural memory. The first of these, social memory, refers to the past as experienced and communicated (or repressed) within a given society. It is continuously changing as it disappears with the death of individuals. The memory of a society is by no means homogenous but is instead divided into generational memories, the importance of which is being (re-)discovered by social psychologists.

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  Autobiographical Memory

  Remembering What and Remembering When

  • Charles P. Thompson, John J. Skowronski, Steen F. Larsen, Andrew L. Betz(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER SIX

  Reconstructive Memory for Time

  THE TEMPORAL ASPECT OF MEMORIES

  To this point we have considered memory for the properties that characterize the content of individual, single episodes. In some ways, our approach is conceptually similar to traditional laboratory research in which words presented to a subject and later used in a memory test make up an experimental episode. However, at least two important differences exist between laboratory and naturalistic memory research. First, personal memories concern natural, meaningful events. Second, memory for these events includes information indicating that the individual who now remembers them was also present to experience them originally. Thus, unlike items in the typical list-learning experiment, personal memories have autobiographical reference (Tulving, 1972) or self-reference (Brewer, 1986; Nelson, 1993).

  Memory for the “what” of events is, of course, necessary for anybody to have personal memories. However, early memory researchers commonly emphasized an additional feature of personal memories, namely that the events are “expressly referred to the past, thought of as in the past” (James, 1890/1950, p. 650). Similarly, Höffding (1885/1891, p. 135) emphasized “definite reference of the representation to a definite point in time” as a feature of “memory proper,” as opposed to sheer familiarity or recognition. In other words, some awareness of the time of the event, a temporal location that is at least more definite than a feeling of pastness, is required for a genuine personal memory.

  The importance of time has re-emerged in recent conceptions of personal memory. Tulving (1972) argued that episodic memory contains “information about temporally dated episodes or events, and temporal-spatial relations among these events” (p. 385). In Brewer’s (1986) discussion of the concepts of autobiographical and personal memory, temporal properties were not explicitly mentioned as a defining feature of these types of memory. However, Brewer endorsed Tulving’s statement as a precise description of personal memory; he thus seems to take temporal location as a self-evident ingredient of the definition (but see Brewer, 1994). Nelson (1993) explicitly emphasized time when she wrote that autobiographical memory is “a particular form of episodic memory in which specificity of time and place is significant” (p. 357).

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  Retrospective Assessment of Mental States in Litigation

  Predicting the Past

  • Robert I. Simon, Daniel W. Shuman, Robert I. Simon, Daniel W. Shuman(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • American Psychiatric Association Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Just because one theory applies to one individual does not necessarily mean that it can be applied to all individuals per se. Memory can function differently across individuals and situations. We cannot assume that all individuals will be affected by the same events or show the same set of memory biases. As Eysenck and Keene (1995, p. 185) stated, “It may well be that what we remember of our own lives is to some extent a reflection of our personalities.” Our memory shapes us into the in- dividuals we are, but conversely, that individuality also may to some extent affect our memories. In a similar way our memory may operate differently depending on the context of remembering. This has been most clearly illustrated by the cur- rent debate on the reliability and validity of recovered memories, particu- larly those memories recovered in therapy. Although it is possible to retrieve accurate memories in the latter context, we know that memory dis- tortions may readily occur under these conditions. Until we develop tech- niques that allow therapists to discriminate accurate from inaccurate memories, any memory for which the source cannot be identified must be subject to careful scrutiny by the courts. 328 Retrospective Assessment of Mental States in Litigation References American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs: Scientific status of re- freshing recollection by the use of hypnosis. JAMA 253:1918–1923, 1985 American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Association, 2000 Attorney General (Northern Ireland) v Gallagher A.C. 349 applied (1963) Baddeley A: Essentials of Human Memory. East Sussex, UK, Psychology Press, 1999 Baddeley AD, Hitch G: Working memory, in Recent Advances in Learning and Motivation.

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  Real World Psychology

  • Karen R. Huffman, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Without it, we would have no past or future. Yet our memories are also highly fallible. Although some people think of memory as a gigantic library or an automatic video recorder, our memories are not exact recordings of events. Instead, memory is a constructive process through which we actively organize and shape information as it is being processed, stored, and retrieved. As expected, this construction often leads to serious errors and biases, which we’ll discuss throughout the chapter. Memory Models To understand memory (and its constructive nature), you need a model of how it operates. Over the years, psychologists have developed numerous models for mem- ory, and we’ll focus on the two most important ones. Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval (ESR) Model According to the encoding, storage, and retrieval (ESR) model , the barrage of information that we encounter every day goes through three basic operations: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Each of these processes represents a different func- tion that is closely analogous to the parts and functions of a computer (Figure 7.1) . To input data into a computer, you begin by typing letters and numbers on the keyboard. The computer then translates these keystrokes into its own electronic language. In a roughly similar fashion, your brain encodes sensory information (sound, visual images, and other senses) into a neural code (language) it can under- stand and use. Once information is encoded, it must be stored . Computer information is normally stored on a flash drive or hard drive, whereas human information is stored in the brain. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Memory The internal record or representa- tion of some prior event or experience; the mental capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information. Constructive process The process of organizing and shaping information dur- ing processing, storage, and retrieval of memories.

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  Presenting the Past

  Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering

  • Jeffrey Prager(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  There now exists a substantial body of research that challenges that assumption, although it has not crystallized into a sustained critique of the prevailing tradition. Ms. A.’s misremembering cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by conventional science. To describe, for example, her memories of abuse in terms of some form of brain dysfunction is to ignore their context-dependent character. Moreover, conventional understanding hardly generates a satisfactory explanation of the changes over time in the memories Ms. A. produced. Focusing on the truth or falseness of her recollections rather than exploring their meaning in her present life obscures the impossibility of completely knowing the past. We can aspire only to bet-ter knowing the past; and to achieve that we cannot sequester memory from inner states, motives, or a medi-ating self. Memory is one expression of the mind’s relation to the body—an interchange between feeling states and mental activity through which an individual strives for a synchro-nous, harmonious, and continuous self. Memory also expresses the mind’s relation to the world of other subjec-tivities, and to the cultural universe. Understood in this way, memory is part and parcel of the social and temporal coordinates when and where remembering occurs. It is also part and parcel of the developmental process that implicates a person in his or her own past, and that con-stitutes the person’s self in relation to the surrounding social world. In this chapter I return to the embodiment 178 ➤ Presenting the Past and embeddedness of memory, with a focus on their impli-cations for the brain. To do so I must enter the citadel of conventional science on memory. The Embodied Brain In his important book Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio endorses a blurring of boundaries between what have long been considered discrete functions of the brain.

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  Representation in Mind

  New Approaches to Mental Representation

  • Hugh Clapin, Phillip Staines, Peter Slezak(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Elsevier Science

    (Publisher)

  But various kinds of reorganization and realignment often happen to the information retained in my brain over the same period. In us, many memories do not naturally sit still in cold storage. This consensus about the constructive nature of remembering needn't be unrealistically overdescribed. It's not that accuracy and reliability in memory are suddenly shown by science to be impossible or unlikely. Rather, the assumption is that understanding of the mechanisms of distortion will also illuminate the processes operating in veridical remembering (Mitchell & Johnson 2000: 179-180). Neither accuracy or reliability are transparent notions in this context, and truth in memory, though not forever inaccessible, is neither a single nor a simple thing. Verbatim recall and other forms of exact reproduction are rarely necessary for success in remembering (Rubin 1995). Constructive Memory and Source Monitoring The source monitoring framework developed by Marcia Johnson and her colleagues exemplifies a method of experimental phenomenology which takes subjective judgements and feelings as core explananda for cognitive psychological theory. Source monitoring is the process of recalling when, where, and how some information was acquired (Johnson et al. 1993; Johnson & Raye 2000; Mitchell & Johnson 2000). Johnson argues that there is typically no tag or label on a memory to specify its source. Instead, activated contents must be evaluated and attributed to particular sources through decision processes performed during remembering (Johnson et al. 1993: 3). Our subjective experience of autobiographical remember- ing, it's suggested, depends on our source attributions: when some content doesn't 200 John Sutton have the right set of qualitative characteristics, it's likely to be experienced not as something I remember through personal experience, but just as something I know (Rajaram & Roediger 1997).

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  Psychology

  • Douglas Bernstein, , , (Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  196 Memory What do we still need to know? Studies such as this one make it clear that memory is constructive and that memory distor-tion and inaccuracy are very common (e.g., Arndt, 2012; Otgaar et al., 2012; Zhu et al., 2012). In fact, even people with highly superior memory for the events of their lives still have many false memories and do not realize it (Patihis et al., 2013). With appropriate feedback, people may be able to recognize and correct false memories (Clark et al., 2012; Leding, 2012), but exactly how the distortion process works and why false memories seem so real is still unclear. Perhaps the more frequently we recall an event, as when students were allowed to rehearse some lists, the stronger our belief is that we have recalled it accurately. There is also evidence that merely thinking about certain objects or events or hearing sounds or seeing photos asso-ciated with them appears to make false memories of them more likely (Garry & Gerrie, 2005; Henkel, Franklin, & Johnson, 2000). And there are times when, after watching someone else do something, we form the false memory that we have done that same thing ourselves (Lindner et al., 2010). This phenomenon may involve the activity of mirror neurons, which are discussed in the chapter on biological aspects of psychology. Questions about how false memories are created lead to even deeper questions about the degree to which our imperfect memory processes might distort our experiences of reality. Is there an objective reality, or do we each experience our own version of reality? Constructive Memory and Neural Network Models Neural network models of memory offer one way of explaining how semantic and ep-isodic information become integrated in constructive memories. As mentioned earlier, these models suggest that newly learned facts alter our general knowledge of the world. These network models focus on how memory creates associations between different spe-cific facts.

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