Martin A. Conway

The formation of flashbulb memories

A large group of subjects took part in a multinational test-retest study to investigate the formation of flashbulb (FS) memories for learning tie news of the resignation of the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Over 86% of the U.K. subjects were found to have FB memories nearly 1 year after the resignation; their memory reports were characterized by spontaneous, accurate, and full recall of event details, including minutiae. In contrast, less than 29%a of the non-U.K. subjects had FB memories 1 year later; memory reports in this group were characterized by forgetting, reconstructive errors, and confabulatory responses. A causal analysis of secondary variables showed that the formation of FB memories was primarily associated with the level of importance attached to the event and level of affective response to the news. These findings lend some support to the study by R. Brown and Kulik (1977), who suggest that FB memories may constitute a class of autobiographical memories distinguished by some form of preferential encoding.

Organization in autobiographical memory

Three experiments investigated timed autobiographical memory retrieval to cue words and phrases. In the first experiment, subjects retrieved memories to cues that named semantic category members and were primed with the superordinate category name or with a neutral word. No prime effects were observed. In the second experiment, subjects retrieved memories to primed and unprimed semantic category cues and to personal primes and personal history cues. Personal primes named lifetime periods (e.g., “school days”) and personal history cues named general events occurring in those lifetime periods for each subject (e.g., “holiday in Italy”). Only personal primes were found to significantly facilitate memory retrieval. A third experiment replicated this finding and also failed to find any prime effects to primes and cues naming activities not directly related to an individual’s personal history. In this experiment, characteristics of recalled events (e.g,, personal importance, frequency of rehearsal, pleasantness, and specificity of the memory) were found to be strongly associated with memories retrieved to personal cues and only mildly associated with memories retrieved to other types of cues. These findings suggest that one way in which autobiographical memories may be organized is in terms of a hierarchically structured abstracted personal history.

Pictures, images and recollective experience

Five experiments investigated the influence of picture processing on recollective experience in recognition memory. Subjects studied items that differed in visual or imaginal detail, such as pictures versus words and high-imageability versus low-imageability words, and performed orienting tasks that directed processing either toward a stimulus as a word or toward a stimulus as a picture or image. Standard effects of imageability (e.g., the picture superiority effect and memory advantages following imagery) were obtained only in recognition judgments that featured recollective experience and were eliminated or reversed when recognition was not accompanied by recollective experience. It is proposed that conscious recollective experience in recognition memory is cued by attributes of retrieved memories such as sensory-perceptual attributes and records of cognitive operations performed at encoding.

A Structural Model of Autobiographical Memory

The structural model of autobiographical memory proposes that memories are dynamically constructed ‘on-line’ rather than retrieved directly from memory. A generative retrieval process successively samples long-term memory structures which retain knowledge of phenomenal experiences occurring at encoding or thematic knowledge relating to the meaning of an event. Knowledge of phenomenal experiences and associated thematic knowledge are combined by a central processing resource and in this way an autobiographical memory is constructed. The structural model is supported by a wide range of findings within autobiographical memory research and from studies of amnesia. Moreover, the structural model strongly emphasises the role of the self in autobiographical memory construction. The model also implies that the ‘experience’ of remembering arises when knowledge of past phenomenal experience is incorporated into current processing sequences.

A Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Study of Autobiographical Memory Retrieval

Memory for the experiences of ones life, autobiographical memory (AM), is one of the most human types of memory, yet comparatively little is known of its neurobiology. A positron emission tomography (PET) study of AM retrieval revealed that the left frontal cortex was significantly active during retrieval (compared to memory control tasks), together with activation in the inferior temporal and occipital lobes in the left hemisphere. We propose that this left frontal lobe activation reflects the operation of control processes that modulate the construction of AMs in posterior neocortical networks.

On the Very Long-Term Retention of Knowledge Acquired Through Formal Education: Twelve Years of Cognitive Psychology

Former students (N=373) of a course in cognitive psychology (CP), conducted between 1978 and 1989, completed memory tests to assess retention of CP. Memory for proper names of researchers, concepts, and conceptual relations varied with retention interval (RI), and memory performance declined over the first 36 months of retention and then stabilized at above-chance levels for the remainder of the retention period. Memory for general facts from the course and research methods did not, however, vary with RI and remained at the same above-chance level across all RIs sampled. The recall and recognition of proper names showed a more rapid decline than the recall and recognition of concepts

Retrieval-induced forgetting of emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories

This experiment extended the retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF) procedure from simple, episodic information to emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories. In the elicitation phase, participants generated specific memories from their past in response to negative, neutral, or positive category cues. In the retrieval‐practice phase, they practised retrieving (and elaborated further on) some of the memories for some of the categories. In the final test phase, they tried to recall all memories. Memories that received retrieval practice were recalled more often on final test than baseline memories, whereas memories that were not practised, yet competed with practised memories via a shared category cue, were recalled less often than baseline memories. We discuss the roles of inhibition, competition, emotion, and self‐relevance, and consider what laboratory manipulations of memory might reveal about everyday and pathological personal memory.

Disruption of Inhibitory Control of Memory Following Lesions to the Frontal and Temporal Lobes

A group of patients with lesions to the frontal lobes, a group with lesions to the temporal lobes, and groups of non-brain damaged controls took part in three experiments. The first experiment used directed forgetting (DF) by items, the second DF by lists, and the third retrieval induced forgetting (RIF). Frontal patients with right side lesions could not intentionally inhibit but all frontal patients showed normal RIF. Temporal patients with left side lesions had abnormal DF by lists and all the temporal patients had abnormal RIF. These findings are explained in terms of impairment to executive thought avoidance control processes in frontal patients and impaired knowledge access to long-term memory in temporal patients.

Neurophysiological correlates of memory for experienced and imagined events

Changes in slow cortical potentials within EEG were monitored while autobiographical memories of experienced and imagined event were generated and then held in mind for a short period. The generation of both kinds of memory led to significantly larger negative dc shifts over left versus right frontal regions, and this was interpreted as a reflection of substantial left frontal activation. The generation phase was also associated with greater right versus left negative dc shifts over posterior occipital regions. This pattern replicates and extends previous findings from our laboratory. In addition, however, experienced memories were associated with significantly larger negative dc shifts over occipito-temporal regions than imagined events. Furthermore, during the hold-in-mind period, imagined events led to larger negative dc shifts over left frontal regions than experienced events. These findings suggest that memories for imagined and experienced events may share control processes that mediate construction of memories but that they differ in the types of content of the memories: memories of experienced events contain sensory-perceptual episodic knowledge stored in occipital networks whereas memories for imagined events contain generic imagery generated from frontal networks.

Self-centered memories: The reminiscence bump and the self

The self-memory relationship is thought to be bidirectional, in such a way that memories provide context for the self, and equally, the self exercises control over retrieval (Conway, 2005). Autobiographical memories are not distributed equally across the life span; instead, memories peak between ages 10 and 30. This reminiscence bump has been suggested to support the emergence of a stable and enduring self. In the present study, the relationship between memory accessibility and self was explored with a novel methodology that used generation of self images in the form of I am statements. Memories generated from I am cues clustered around the time of emergence for that particular self image. We argue that, when a new self-image is formed, it is associated with the encoding of memories that are relevant to that self and that remain highly accessible to the rememberer later in life. This study offers a new methodology for academics and clinicians interested in the relationship between memory and identity.