Centre for Advanced Study
at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

A joined publication (in prep.):

Everyday memory

Edited by Tore Helstrup and Svein Magnussen
Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Types of memory

Memory in social contexts

Control processes in memory

Individual and group differences

Closure

Chapter 1

What do people believe about memory?

Svein Magnussen, Jan Andersson, Rossana De Beni, Cesare Cornoldi, Tor Endestad, Gail Goodman, Tore Helstrup, Asher Koriat, Maria Larsson, Annika Melinder, Lars-Göran Nilsson, Jerker Rönnberg & Hubert Zimmer

1. Everyday metaphors and models of memory – a history of beliefs on human memory.

Why would we like to know about peoples beliefs about human memory?

• Implications for understanding conflicts and controversies in everyday life
• Evaluating eyewitnesses' memory reports. Examples of unrealistic demands on memory in criminal court cases in Norway

2. Review of studies on beliefs about memory – experts and lay people

3. What do people believe about memory – a survey of Norwegian citizens (n = 1000).

• Can memory be trained?
• Is there a limit to the amount of information the brain is able to store?
• How early are the earliest memories?
• Children's memory compared to adult memory
• Memory and aging
• Confidence in memory
• Memory for dramatic and traumatic events – better or worse than for mundane memorable events?
• False memory

4. Conclusions

• Memory science and everyday beliefs – do people have unrealistic ides about memory?
• Links to remaining chapters

Chapter 2

Visuo-spatial thinking, imagination, and remembering

Hubert D. Zimmer, Svein Magnussen & Jerker Rönnberg

1. Making use of visual information

• Intriguing examples where visual information and imagination is used: Following a mystery story at the radio, solving a construction problem whiled reading the instructions of a Nordic furniture distributor, playing the concentration Memory game with your kids

2. Cognitive systems for visuo-spatial thinking and remembering

• Visuo-spatial working memory: Models and interpretations
• Non-verbal memory systems: dual code theory and modality-specific part systems, the imagery debate
• Sign language

3. Remembering visual-sensory information

• The picture superiority effect: memory advantage of pictures compared to words, imagery effects
• Short-term memory for perceptual details: memory for feature information, memory for object location, spatio-temporal information versus spatial configurations
• Long-term memory for perceptual details: Details are remembered (but only roughly), voluntary versus involuntary memory, verbal overshadowing (verbal elaboration hinders)
• Perceptual details and reality experience: details as indicators of source memory, imagination inflation, false memories for perceptual details
• Imagination as a memory aide

4. Visuo-spatial thinking

• Processing spatial information: Mental scanning, mental rotation, mental synthesis and mental construction
• Spatial thinking and navigation: Route versus survey models
• Imagination in text processing: images as representations of meanings, imagination in sentence comprehension, situation models, visual neglect and imagery

5. Final remarks

• Specific quality of pictorial information
• Enhancing memory
• Problem of imagination and source memory
• Doubting a unitary visual short-term model
• Problem of analogue properties

Chapter 3

Olfactory Memory: Autobiographical and Forensic Perspectives

Maria Larsson and Annika Melinder

1. Theoretical accounts of olfactory memory

• Frame of reference

2. Episodic olfactory memory

• Episodic odor recognition
• Autobiographical olfactory memory 

3. Olfaction in forensic contexts

<< A clinical vignette of a female, claiming being raped by a stranger who had a ”characteristic” smell, which the victim recalls.>>

• Olfactory cuing in forensic context
• Olfaction in witness' recollection
• More reliable reports with olfactory probing?

4. Conclusion

Chapter 4

Action events in everyday life and their remembering

Hubert D. Zimmer, Tore Helstrup and Lars-Göran Nilsson

1. Introduction

• A description of three everyday action event situations, to be used as practical examples for the theoretical analyses and research documentation

2. General knowledge of actions

• Different levels of action knowledge, exemplified by the difference between schematic action knowledge and motor skills

3. Perceiving action events

• Most actions encountered in everyday life are performed by others. How are these actions perceived, interpreted and remembered?

4. Intending actions

• An examination of planned actions, and factors that can impair or improve prospective memory

5. Remembering self-performed actions

• Memory for actions performed by the remembering subject
• Causes for superior action memory, compared to memory for actions performed by others
• Educational implications

6. Conclusions

• The relevance of action research is to the practical examples described in the introduction

Chapter 5

  Collaborative memory:
How is our ability to remember affected by the interaction with others?

Jan Andersson, Tore Helstrup, & Jerker Rönnberg

1. Introduction .

• Memory research has traditionally focused on individual memory processes, systems and performances. Everyday memory, on the other hand, is often “used” in a social setting, when interacting with others. This chapter presents the state of the art within the area of collaborative recall

2. Presentation of the phenomenon and the history

• Presentation of a case of collaborative memory
• The relationship of collaborative memory other social areas of memory and its relevance to everyday memory

3. Empirical findings on collaborative memory

• The effect of friendship on collaborative memory performances
• The effect of age on collaborative memory performances
• The effect of gender on collaborative memory performances
• Motivational aspects of collaborative memory performances

4. Theoretical concepts of memory and their relation to collaborative memory

• Encoding, retrieval material effects, task effects, and false memories
• Two explanations of collaborative memory phenomena: Reduced cue distinctiveness (RCD) and disruption of retrieval strategies

5. Conclusions and a look into the future

Chapter 6

Memory sensitiveness (MS) in autobiographical memory

Cesare Cornoldi, Rossana De Beni and Tore Helstrup

1. Introduction

2. Functions of autobiographical memory

• Different everyday functions of autobiographical memories are discussed: The relation to cognitive, emotional and personality factors, and its function in social contexts

3. Memory sensitiveness

• People are different with respect to their tendency to engage in autobiographical activities, i.e. to privately reflect on their own pasts, or to engage in social communications about their own and shared pasts with others

4. The construction of a questionnaire assessing MS

• A questionnaire measuring memory sensitivity has been constructed, and data collected. These data are discussed from various perspectives in the subsequent chapter sections

5. Is memory sensitiveness related to memory behaviour?

• Is memory sensitivity is related to memory for other types of information?

6. Age and gender differences in memory sensitiveness

• Can memory sensitiveness simply be explained by reference to gender?

7. Memory sensitiveness and belief systems

• Memory sensitivity can be conceived of as a mart of metacognitive knowledge about memory. This section discusses how memory sensitivity is related to naïve theories of memory, how memory sensitivity is related to other beliefs about own and other's memory

8. The personality of the memory sensitive individual

• Two personality types as to their orientations toward memory sensitivity are discussed: Those who are engaged in internalised private forms of memory sensitive activities and those who engage in externalised social activities with reference to memory sensitivity questions

9. Conclusions

Chapter 7

Memory illusions and false memories in the real world

Svein Magnussen, Jan Anderson, Tor Endestad, Gail Goodman, Lene Løkken & Cathrine Mostue

1. A brief history of the study of memory illusions and false memory.

• Psychotherapy and false memories
• Procedures for inducing false autobiographical memories: Stories and pictures
• Induced versus “spontaneous” false memories – the role of imagery
• Collective false memories in society – “everything was better during the war”

2. False memory in everyday contexts.

• A false memory for a misdemeanour at age 17 disclosed at age 55 (author SM)
• Edward Daily and false memories in war veterans
• Psychotherapy and induced false memories from adulthood: A Norwegian court case
• Misattributions and source confusions. Two examples of spontaneous false memories in eyewitnesses: The Mehamn crash and the Linda Didriksen case

3. A study of false memories among young people participating in the reality-TV production “The Robinson expedition”

4. False memories in young children.

• Children's susceptibility to suggestion and the development of false memories for autobiographical events
• Collective bizarre false memories in children: A Norwegian case of alleged mass abuse of preschool children: The Bjugn case

5. Social effects in the development of memory illusions and false memories

• Edward Daily revisited – many of his comrades remembered too
• Social reinforcement and the development of false memories
• Collaborative effects in the development of false memories

6. Conclusions.

• Implications of the false memory research for understanding everyday memory

Chapter 8

Metacognitive aspects of memory

Asher Koriat & Tore Helstrup

1. The regulation of learning and remembering

• Strategies of learning and remembering have been mostly studied as experimental manipulations. Here we focus on self-initiated strategies – how they are chosen during study, rehearsal, and retrieval, and how they affect memory performance

2. Meta cognitive monitoring and control

• Distinguishing between monitoring and control
• The effects of monitoring and control processes on performance
• Explanations of deficient memory performance in terms of deficient monitoring and deficient regulation (examples from developmental studies, aging, and brain damage)

3. Monitoring and control processes during study

• Analytic and non-analytic bases of judgments of learning
• The accuracy of judgments of learning: Calibration vs. resolution
• Failures of monitoring: Dissociations between subjective and objective measures of learning

4. Illusions of knowing during study and how they can be mended

• Illusions deriving from faulty implicit theories about the working of memory
• Illusions deriving from improper reliance on mnemonic cues
• De-biasing procedures and their effectiveness

5. Monitoring processes during remembering

• The feeling of knowing and its bases
• Dissociations between knowing and the feeling of knowing
• The effects of feeling of knowing on memory search

6. The strategic regulation of memory reporting

• Report option: Distinguishing between free-report and forced report situations
• The regulation of report option and how it affects memory accuracy
• A component analysis of memory accuracy under the option of free report
• Failures of monitoring and failures of control during the regulation of memory report
• The control over the grain size of the report

7. General implications for effective memory performance

Chapter 9

Pathways to memory: Voluntary forgetting and involuntary memory

Tore Helstrup, Rossana De Beni, Cesare Cornoldi and Asher Koriat.

1 . Introduction

2. Description format of experienced episodes

• What is an everyday memory episode? A model of episode description

3. A path metaphor of memory

• The chapter discusses retrieval of episodic memories. The remembering individual conceived of as being situated at the crossroad between paths to and from memory - between finding and reporting memories

4. Pathways to memory

• Re-experiencing and re-collecting as alternative paths to episodic memories. Re-experienced memories pop out and are experienced like re-lived episodes. Re-collected episodes are searched for by active effort

5. Pathways from memory

• Some episodic memories are edited in the retrieval process before further processing, edited before further private reflections or before being reported to others. Other memories are reported, to oneself or others, in an unmodified unedited form. The paths from memory are discussed in this chapter section as edited or unedited report forms

6. At the crossroad: Person and meta cognition

• The two pathways to episodic memories are discussed from a meta cognitive perspective. When does the person control episodic memories by choices of the different paths, and when is episodic memories not personally controlled

7. Voluntary forgetting and involuntary memory

• This section examines how the path metaphor analysis can clarify the question about whether deliberate forgetting is a possibility. The path metaphor is then used to discuss the nature of involuntary episodic memory

8. Conclusions

Chapter 10

  Memory expertise

Rossana De Beni, Cesare Cornoldi, Maria Larsson, Svein Magnussen & Jerker Rønnberg

1. Introduction

• What does it mean to speak about individual differences in memory?
  --- general out line
  --- factors affecting individual differences
• Unusual memory performances
  --- Luria's case
  --- Stromeyer's study of high-fidelity eidetic memory
• Definition of expertise
  --- a framework for examining expertise

2. Examples of expertise

• Pictorial memory in artists and lay persons
• The memory of wine tasters
• Spatial orientation and memory – a study of athletes

3. Theoretical issues

• Expertise – general or special?
• Specificity of perceptual learning
• Can you train memory?
  --- failures of training police officers in person identification
• Expertise and the brain – the fMRI study of London cab drivers

4. Conclusions

• The reasons for expertise development
• Implications for everyday memory - education

Chapter 11

Compensatory changes in memory and communication: Disabilities, abilities, and social context

Jerker Rönnberg and Annika Melinder

1. Compensation research: the notion and some constraints

• Origins, means, and criteria of compensation
• Disability and ability
• Spontaneous compensation

2. Sensory impairment and spontaneous memory compensation

• Congenital deafness
• Congenital blindness

3. Spontaneous memory compensation under special, everyday circumstances

• Taxi drivers in London
• Compensation seen as skill: abacus experts and professional violin players

4. Memory abilities support individual compensation for communicative disability

• Reading
• Speech-reading

5. Memory compensation in special populations

• William´s syndrome
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Prader-Willi syndrome

6. Social memory compensation: The case of collaboration in old couples

7. General Discussion

Chapter 12

Age aspects of autobiographical memory: The youngest

Annika Melinder & Gail S. Goodman

1. Explicit and Implicit Memory

• Developmental trajectories in the two memory systems
  --- Unitary system view
  --- Multiple system view
  --- Executive functions
  --- Source monitoring
• Theory of mind and contextual memory
• Infantile amnesia

2. Everyday memory in childhood

• Paradigms when studying memory in children
• Suggestibility in children
  --- Stereotypes, misinformation, peer discussions, and suggestive questioning
• Individual differences
  --- Attachment and social factors contributing to the memory outcome
  --- Cognitive and behavioural factors contributing to memory outcome

3. Emotional distress and Memory

• Emotional memory
• Infantile Amnesia for Traumatic Experiences
• Hyperamnesia, dissociation, and involuntary memories
• Unique Mediators of Traumatic Memories
• Clinical implications
• Paradigms when studying emotional memory in children

4. Memory, and associated brain structures

• Neurological aspects of memory development
• Brain structures and functions involved in emotional memory

5. Conclusions and implications for everyday memory

Chapter 13

Memory in Adulthood and Old Age

Lars-Göran Nilsson and Maria Larsson

2. State of the art: Age changes in memory based on objective measures

• Procedural memory
• Perceptual representation system
• Semantic memory
• Primary memory
• Episodic memory

3. State of the art: Age changes in memory based on subjective measures

• Estimates based on overall memory functioning
• Estimates based on memory of specific events

4. Relation between objective and subjective data

• Cross-sectional analyses
• Longitudinal analyses

5. Conclusions: What does it all mean?

Chapter 14

  Metaphors and everyday memory

Tor Endestad, Tore Helstrup & Asher Koriat

1. Introduction

• The usage of metaphors in classical and contemporary models of memory
• Memory as storage metaphor
• The stage model of memory, itself a metaphor? The stage model broken down:
  Preparation, Encoding, Retention, Retrieval

2. Examples of memory metaphors:

• Preparation: “I did not focus on that”
• Encoding: “To much to remember (physical amount)”, “It didn't stick”
• Retention: “It fades away”
• Retrieval: “It is hard to find”, “It lays deep in memory”
• The nature of memory conceived by metaphors

3. Everyday uses of memory metaphors

• Excuses: Expected forgetting and expected remembering task preparation, shopping, self perception

4. Memory metaphors and culture differences

• Comparisons of metaphor used in: Germany, Italy, Norway
• Relative or absolute folk models

5. True and false memory metaphors

• Communicational metaphors
• Self-fulfilling metaphors
• Metaphors we remember and forget by

6. Conclusions

• Metaphors as folk models of memory
• Social implications and culture