Understanding Memory and Its Disorders: The Self-Memory System and Autobiographical Memory

1. Memory and its disorders The Self and Memory Chris Moulin School of Psychology University of Leeds c.j.a.moulin@leeds.ac.uk

2. What is Memory For? • To learn • locations • language • skills • people • To be yourself • your life story • your responses • your ideas • your understanding

3. Plan • The Self • The Self Reference Effect • AM Basics • The Self Memory system

4. The Self • An adaptive, biological entity (e.g. Daniel Dennett) • Many definitions • Don’t get too bogged down in these

5. The self reference effect • Self is a powerful organizing structure in memory • E.g. the self reference effect • Incidental memory task • How much do these adjectives relate to you (or a friend, or levels of processing) • Material processed in relation to the self is better retained

6. Autobiographical Memory • Autobiographical memory is a complex interaction of: • Episodic memory • Semantic memory • Constrained by: • Self processes • Executive function

7. A memory freely recalled by a 54-year old recalling memories from any point in his life. I remember a bright sunny morning walking down a hill near our house. I had on a red jacket, red shirt, blue jeans, and brown suede boots. I was seventeen. I was going into town and I felt great...it was a feeling of being sort of utterly calm, utterly well, a feeling of expectancy: interesting things were about to happen. It was a feeling I don’t think I have had in such a pure form since.

8. A response made by a person asked to recall a memory to the (cue) word “Ship”. We were going on holiday to France. I remember that we stayed at a boarding house in Dover and went down to the ferry very early the following morning. My brother and I were wildly excited it was the first time we had been abroad and the first time we had been on a ship of any sorts. I have a vivid memory of looking back at the White Cliffs as the boat pulled out of the harbour - they seemed immensely tall, (Conway, 1996).

9. Things that go bump in your life • Accessibility of AM changes across the lifespan • Most memories are retrieved from 20-30

10. Conway’s contribution Conway, M.A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C.W. (2000) The construction of autobiographical memories in the Self Memory System. Psychological Review,107, 261-288. Conway, M.A., Meares, K., & Standart, S. (2004). Images & goals. Memory, in press. Conway, M.A., Singer, J.A., & Tagini, A. (2004). The Self and Autobiographical Memory: Correspondence and Coherence. Social Cognition, 22, 495-537.

11. The working self • Control processes of the working self cannot directly influence the generation of patterns of activation in the knowledge base. • But they can control or channel them by altering/elaborating cues.

12. A knowledge base (in long-term memory). • A set of control processes - which we call the “Working Self”. In Conway’s model memories are generated within a complex mental system called the “self-memory-system” or SMS. The SMS has two major components:

13. Conway suggests there are two forms of memory: • The phylogenetically older memory system - proto-episodic memory primarily concerned with correspondence. • And the phylogenetically more recent - conceptual system primarily concerned with coherence.

15. Older route Newer route

16. The fronto-temporal system is largely concerned with issues to do with coherence. • The temporo-occipital system is largely concerned with issues to do with correspondence.

17. Primary Global Impairments • Patient S.S. (Cermak & O’Connor, 1983) • Injury: Extensive - taking in left frontal, orbitofrontal, temporofrontal junction, bilateral hippocampus and amygdala. • Impairment: Dense RA & AA. No Memories - knew events had occurred, general idea of events and periods in his life. • Patient K.C. (Tulving, et al., 1988) • Injury: left frontal-parietal, right parietal-occipital • Impairment: Dense RA & AA. No memories - some lifetime period knowledge. • Patient L.T. (Kapur, et al., 1992) • Injury Bilateral temporofrontal • Impairment: Dense RA Mild AA - No memories, some personal fact remained, indication of emotional recognition. • Patient E.D. (Markowitsch, et al., 1993; see too Kroll, Markowitsch, et al., 1997) • Injury: Bilateral temporofrontal • Impairment: Dense RA Mild AA - No memories, some personal facts remained.

18. Secondary Global Impairments • Patient M.H. (Ogden, 1993) • Injury: Occipital lesions (+other areas) • Impairment: Severe disruption of visual imaging abilities.Dense RA (for visual memories) no AA. Post-morbid memories all nonvisual. • Patient L.D. (O’Connor, et al., 1992) • Injury: R.H. Lesion extending from posterior frontal regions through the temporal lobe to occipital regions. Plus, more circumscribed LH lesion. • Impairment: Severe disruption of visual imaging abilities.Dense RA no AA, virtually no memories even for childhood but retained some factual knowledge. • Patient D.H. (Hunkin, et al., 1995) • Injury: Circumscribed lesions in right parieto-occipital and left occipital lobes. • Impairment: Dense RA for pre-injury events, very mild AA, and 18 years after the injury has a good but visually impoverished autobiographical memory.

19. Fractionation of AM • Patient P.S. (Hodges & McCarthy, 1993) • - Injury: Bilateral paramedian thalamic lesion. • Impairment: Dense RA and AA. Preservation of an ‘island’ of AM knowledge relating to when he had been a naval rating during WWII. He believed himself to be at home on shore leave. • Patient R.F.R. (McCarthy & Warrington, 1993). • - Injury: Temporal lobe lesions • Impairment: Dense RA & AA. Had preserved access to lifetime period knowledge (a sort of personal c.v. of his life) with very occasional and sporadic recall of a specific memory. He was found to have excellent knowledge about the appearance of people he knew but could recall no events associated with them. • Patient K.S. (Ellis, et al., 1989) • - Injury: Right anterior temporal lobectomy for intractable epilepsy • Impairment: No amnesia but could not access knowledge about people who featured in events she was otherwise able to recall ‘normally’.