Determinants of specificity in autobiographical memory
Year: 1997
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Depressed and suicidal patients have difficulty in recollecting specific \nautobiographical events. In response to cue words they tend to generate \nsummarised or general memories instead of specific events. The objectives of \nthis thesis are to explore the mechanisms underlying the production of \nspecific and general autobiographical memories in a non clinical population. \nThe roles of imagery and working memory in the generation of \nautobiographical memories were investigated. \nFour experiments examined how manipulating the imageability of the cue \naffected subsequent retrieval in autobiographical memory. The results show \nthat cues high in imageability facilitated access to specific memories and that \nvisual imageability was the most significant piedictor of memory specificity \ncompared to a range of other perceptual modalities. The effect of an \nexperimental manipulation on retrieval style was examined by instructing \nparticipants to retrieve specific events or general events using high or low \nimageable words to cue memories. The results show that induction. of a \ngeneric retrieval style reduced the specificity of images of future events. This \nmodels clinical findings with depressed and suicidal patients and suggests \nthat associations between memory retrieval and future imaging share \ncommon intermediate pathways. A further experiment suggested that the \nimage ability effects mediating the construction of specific memories may be \nin part due to the predicability of such retrieval cues. \nThe hypothesis that retrieval of specific autobiographical memories is more \neffortful compared to the retrieval of general memories was also investigated \nusing a dual task paradigm. Although central executive function has been \nimplicated many times in the monitoring of autobiographical retrieval, no \ndirect assessment of executive capacity during retrieval has been made. The \nresults showed no significant difference in the randomness of a keypressing \ntask when specific or general autobiographical memories were retrieved in \nresponse to either high or low imageable cue words. A direct retrieval \nhypothesis was proposed whereby cues directly accessed specific events in \nautobiographical memory and the adoption of such a strategy enabled \nparticipants to maintain performance on the secondary task.
Author: Helen Healy
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1717065401