Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview
- Part II Historical, theoretical, and methodological contexts for the study of autobiographical memory
- Part III The general organization of autobiographical memory
- Part IV The temporal organization of autobiographical memory
- Part V Temporal distributions of autobiographical memories
- Part VI Failures of autobiographical memory
- Author index
- Subject index
Part V - Temporal distributions of autobiographical memories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview
- Part II Historical, theoretical, and methodological contexts for the study of autobiographical memory
- Part III The general organization of autobiographical memory
- Part IV The temporal organization of autobiographical memory
- Part V Temporal distributions of autobiographical memories
- Part VI Failures of autobiographical memory
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Crovitz and Schiffman began their 1974 seminal paper, “Frequency of episodic memories as a function of their age,” by stating, “It would be desirable to expose by listing the full storage of episodic memory. Such a list should include the age of each memory as referred to the present” (Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 4, 517). The two chapters in Part V analyze data in which subjects recorded the first memories that came to mind for such a list. Although there was little control of what the subjects chose to recall, subjects of similar ages responded in remarkably similar ways. Their recollections quantitatively demonstrate two phenomena of autobiographical memory that have been discussed qualitatively for some time both experimentally and anecdotally: childhood amnesia and reminiscence. In these chapters, the general existence and form of the phenomena are confirmed, but the quantitative descriptions of the phenomena challenge existing theories.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Autobiographical Memory , pp. 189 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986