A Theory of Autobiographical Memory: Necessary Components and Disorders Resulting from their Loss

Klein, Stanley A.; German, Tim P.; Cosmides, Leda; Gabriel, Rami

doi:10.1521/soco.22.5.460.50765

Cited by 106 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…The notion that memory does not consists in uniquely specifiable, self-contained traces, but rather is a creative effort involving acts of expectation, imagination, belief and other cognitive abilities also is seen in research showing that recollection consists in a variety of functionally independent subsystems that contribute the "who", "what", "where" and "when" to the "unified" product given to consciousness (e.g., Klein, German, Cosmides, & Gabriel, 2004;McCarthy & Warrington, 1992).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Klein¹

2013

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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144

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a b s t r a c tCommon wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Klein¹

2013

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

Self Cite

144

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“…In this respect, we expected that executive processes involved in the organization and monitoring of retrieval would play a general role in future thinking and would thus be related to various measures of future thinking, whereas visual-spatial processing should show stronger relationships with tasks that assess the episodic dimension of future thinking (e.g., the amount of sensory descriptions referring to specific events). Furthermore, according to Klein et al (2004), self-consciousness and the sense of temporality are involved in transforming information that is currently activated in the autobiographical database into an autobiographical experiencethat is, the feeling of mentally traveling through time to reexperience or preexperience events. Therefore, these dimensions should be particularly related to feelings of experiencing the imagined events.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Tulving (1985Tulving ( , 2005 is one of the first to have called attention to such commonalities, noting that "mental time travel" into the past and future involves a notion of self (the "traveler") and a sense of subjective time. More specifically, remembering past events and imagining future events require the capacity for self-consciousness and, in particular, the capacity to distinguish between self and others and between selves from distinct time periods (e.g., to understand that one's future self may have mental states that differ from one's current mental state; see also Klein, German, Cosmides, & Gabriel, 2004;Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). Furthermore, remembering past events and imagining future events require the capacity to become aware of the temporal dimension of one's own experiences and involve processes that locate events along this subjective timeline (Klein et al, 2002;Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007;Tulving, 2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

Component processes underlying future thinking

et al. 2010

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This study sought to investigate the component processes underlying the ability to imagine future events, using an individual-differences approach. Participants completed several tasks assessing different aspects of future thinking (i.e., fluency, specificity, amount of episodic details, phenomenology) and were also assessed with tasks and questionnaires measuring various component processes that have been hypothesized to support future thinking (i.e., executive processes, visual-spatial processing, relational memory processing, self-consciousness, and time perspective). The main results showed that executive processes were correlated with various measures of future thinking, whereas visual-spatial processing abilities and time perspective were specifically related to the number of sensory descriptions reported when specific future events were imagined. Furthermore, individual differences in self-consciousness predicted the subjective feeling of experiencing the imagined future events. These results suggest that future thinking involves a collection of processes that are related to different facets of future-event representation.

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“…Episodic recall, in addition to including specific event-related information (spatio-temporal framework, sensorio-perceptive aspects) [18], also provides the feeling that the recalled event belongs to one's personal past, a feeling defined as autonoetic awareness [19,20]. More recently, Kline et al [21] proposed that episodic memory implies not only retrieval of contextual information, but most importantly requires that the contents of the episodic memory be either (i) perceived as belonging to self; (ii) associated with a temporal sensation related to self; (iii) perceived as being the result of an action initiated by self, or finally (iv) implicating self-reflection capacities. Episodic memory is thus strongly associated with self.…”

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confidence: 99%

SenseCam: A new tool for memory rehabilitation?

et al. 2016

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International audienceThe emergence of life-logging technologies has led neuropsychologist to focus on understanding how this new technology could help patients with memory disorders. Despite the growing number of studies using life-logging technologies, a theoretical framework supporting its effectiveness is lacking. This review focuses on the use of life-logging in the context of memory rehabilitation, particularly the use of SenseCam, a wearable camera allowing passive image capture. In our opinion, reviewing SenseCam images can be effective for memory rehabilitation only if it provides more than an assessment of prior occurrence in ways that reinstates previous thoughts, feelings and sensory information, thus stimulating recollection. Considering the fact that, in memory impairment, self-initiated processes are impaired, we propose that the environmental support hypothesis can explain the value of SenseCam for memory retrieval. Twenty-five research studies were selected for this review and despite the general acceptance of the value of SenseCam as a memory technique, only a small number of studies focused on recollection. We discuss the usability of this tool to improve episodic memory and in particular, recollection

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A Theory of Autobiographical Memory: Necessary Components and Disorders Resulting from their Loss

Cited by 106 publications

References 114 publications

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction.

Component processes underlying future thinking

SenseCam: A new tool for memory rehabilitation?

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