More than 20 years after the publication of the first book launching research on Autobiographical memory the field has grown dramatically and demonstrated its significance in numerous ways. It has shown a strong ability to establish clear empirical generalizations that would hardly have been established through traditional laboratory experiments with neutral verbal materials. It has shown its practical relevance by deepening our understanding of several clinical disorders, and by demonstrating the induction of false memories in the legal system. It has become an important topic for brain studies, and thus helped to enlarge our general understanding of the neural basis for behavior. It appears that the time is now ready for reconsidering autobiographical memory by discussing and trying to integrate the theoretical perspectives that have evolved over the years concerning its basic neural systems, underlying cognitive structures, retrieval processes, how it develops in infancy and childhood, breaks down in aging and dementia, its social and cultural aspects and its relation to personality and the self.

This conference seeks to do so by bringing together some of the most outstanding researchers on autobiographical memory and having each of them presenting their key findings and particular theoretical perspective on the field in relation to their area of expertise. In addition, we invite all researchers in the field to submit poster presentations describing some of their most recent and exciting findings concerning autobiographical memory.

• Alan Baddeley, University of York
  
  

  Reflections on the study of autobiographical memory
  

  The study of autobiographical memory by cognitive psychologists began about 25 years ago. Since that time it has grown considerably in both range of application and popularity, but as someone returning to view the field after several years absence, it is less clear that it has developed theoretically to the same extent. Is this the case? And if so, why, and what can we do about it?
  
  

• Patricia Bauer, Emory University
  
  

  The life I once remembered: The waxing and waning of early memories

  Adults experience a paucity of memories from infancy and early childhood. This childhood amnesia contributed to the impression that infants and young children lacked the ability to remember the experiences of their lives. The development of nonverbal tests of memory led to a revision of this perspective and a wealth of evidence that young children and even infants remember. Contemporary research into the multiple determinants of the development of memory, from the brain structures that make remembering possible to the social context of remembering, has advanced our understanding of how memory develops in children and has pulled back the veil on the mystery of childhood amnesia among adults. This talk will feature new retrospective and prospective data that reveal differences in the patterns of remembering and forgetting of events experienced at different points in childhood, thereby allowing observation of the development of childhood amnesia. It also will include behavioral and neuroimaging data (event-related potentials, fMRI) that inform the processes and determinants of developmental differences in episodic and autobiographical memory over the course of development.
  
  

• Dorthe Berntsen, Aarhus University
  
  

  In search of lost time: Involuntary and voluntary autobiographical remembering and the cultural structuring of time
  
  

  Involuntary autobiographical memories are memories of personal experiences that come to mind spontaneously – i.e., with no preceding conscious attempt at retrieval. Such memories have been neglected in research on autobiographical memory. Most research has concentrated on memories retrieved voluntarily – i.e., in a deliberate and goal-directed fashion. I argue that involuntary memories are a basic mode of remembering that operates on the same episodic memory system as voluntary memories. Both involuntary and voluntary remembering involve mental time travel (i.e., the ability to mentally relive past events) both are universal, frequent and functional (although both can have dysfunctional side-effects). Because involuntary remembering is associative and requires less executive functions, it is likely to be evolutionarily earlier than the voluntary mode and to be present in many non-human species. The cultural structuring of subjective time, in terms of time technologies and cultural life scripts, supports both voluntary and involuntary remembering in humans and enables mental time travel over temporally longer distances than in other species.
  
  

• Norman Brown, University of Alberta
  
  

  Historical-defined Autobiographical Periods: Their Origins and Implications

  (Norman R. Brown & Peter J. Lee, University of Alberta)
  
  

  This chapter will consist of three sections. First, we review evidence indicating that historically-significant public events sometimes create historical-defined autobiographical periods (H-DAPs), and we argue that this happens only when external events bring about wide-spread, profound and enduring changes in the fabric of daily life. The remaining sections address the implications of these claims. Specifically, in the second section, we focus on collective memory and consider the possibility that H-DAP formation predicts the intergenerational transmission of the precipitating events and that the absence of H-DAPs predicts the opposite. In the third section, we discuss the theoretical implications of this research for a general understanding of personal memory. In particular, we contend that autobiographical memory is organized in a way that reflects marked changes in the fabric of daily life (FoDL). Typically, these FoDL transitions occur at the level of the indivual, but they can also occur at the level of the group. On this view, standard lifetime periods are associated with FoDL transitions at the individual level, and H-DAPs are associated with FoDL transitions at the group level.
  
  

• Roberto Cabeza, Duke University
  
  

  Functional Neuroimaging of Autobiographical Memory

  (Roberto Cabeza & Peggy St. Jacques, Duke University)
  
  

  Functional neuroimaging studies of autobiographical memory (AM) have grown dramatically during the last few years. These studies are important for several reasons. First, AM studies achieve greater ecological validity than studies using simple laboratory stimuli, such as words or pictures. For example, they demonstrate the contributions of self-referential processing and associated medial prefrontal regions to remembering personal past events. Second, they allow the investigation of longer retention periods, which is important for examining memory consolidation and reconstructive memory processes. For instance, they allow the study of how different prefrontal regions contribute to ordering past events in time. Third, AM studies are useful for investigating the interaction between memory, sensory, and emotion systems. For example, they have shown that vivid memories recruit imagery processes in visual cortex whereas emotional memories engage arousal processes in the amygdala. Finally, AM studies are ideal for investigating the roles of episodic and semantic memory during memory reconstruction. For instance, they have shown that the contribution of episodic memory, as revealed by the reliving experience, is directly linked to the strength of hippocampal activations. In sum, functional neuroimaging studies of AM complement laboratory-stimuli studies by enhancing ecological validity, expanding retention intervals, assessing the role of sensory and emotion processes, and revealing the contributions of episodic vs. semantic memory.
  
  

• Martin Conway, University of Leeds
  
  

  Autobiographical Memory: Consciousness, Culture, & Evolution
  
  

  In this paper I first consider the nature of AM representations in long-term memory, including neural representations, and the functions these representations serve especially with reference to the self. Various types of conscious experience which these AM representations give rise too are then discussed. It is proposed that each individual exists in a ‘remembering-imagining’ window of consciousness that moves through time which is past-driven and future-oriented and which provides the mental context for conscious experiences of remembering. The review then turns to culture, notions of identity, and the integration of cultural knowledge with AM. Finally, some brief suggestions are made about the evolution of AM and particularly about which parts of the system might be species-general and which unique to humans.
  
  

• Arnaud D'Argembeau, University of Liège
  
  

  Autobiographical memory and future thinking

  One of the main functions of autobiographical memory may be to retain information in order to anticipate and predict possible future events. Recent findings from various areas of psychology and neuroscience indicate that there is indeed an intimate relationship between the ability to remember past events and the ability to imagine future events. In this talk, I will review recent studies that have shown that constructing mental representations of possible future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as does remembering past events. I will then present some theoretical hypotheses regarding the nature and organization of knowledge structures that are used to represent future events. Finally, the importance of motivational factors in future thinking will also be addressed.
  
  

• Merlin Donald, Queen`s University
  
  

  Evolutionary origins of autobiographical memory: a review of key issues.

  "The storage and retrieval aspects of human memory have different evolutionary origins, with voluntary retrieval evolving late, and quite recently. Memory storage, including episodic recognition, seems similar in primates and humans, but voluntary memory search and retrieval is found only in humans. This core capacity may be called "autocuing," or the self-triggering of specific memories. Autocuing does not appear in our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, and was thus probably absent in our common ancestor with them. It appears to have emerged in hominids in two stages. The first stage appeared in the form of a capacity for voluntarily rehearsing nonverbal skills, especially toolmaking skills. This capacity entails the creative pantomime of previous actions, towards their refinement -- mimesis -- and is contingent on voluntarily searching for, and retrieving, specific previous performances from memory. The second stage in the evolution of autocuing came with spoken language, during the last 400 thousand years, and appears to have been scaffolded on mimesis. The neural mechanism of autocuing appears to be supramodal, and linked to the mechanisms of voluntary movement."
  
  

• William Hirst, New School for Social Research
  
  

  Autobiographical memories are individually held memories that shape individual identity, whereas collective memories are shared individually held memories that shape collective identity.  This paper will explore how memory is designed in a manner that promotes the formation of collective memories, focusing on the role of social interaction.  The concept of collective memory will be discussed and the role psychology can play in theorizing about collective memory will be explored.  Socially shared forgetting will serve as a case study of the way psychological attributes of individual memory can promote the formation of collective memory.
  
  

• Joseph Fitzgerald, Wayne State University
  
  

  Lifespan Developmental Perspectives on Autobiographical Memory and Narrative.
  
  (Joseph M. Fitzgerald & Carissa Broadbridge, Wayne State University, USA)
  
  

  The lifespan perspective has guided research and theory concerning the development of human and nonhuman systems over the past 40 years. Several consistent themes have emerged over the years as central to that perspective: contextual modeling of individual and cohort development across the lifespan, multidirectionality and multidimensionality of developmental science, plasticity of development, and a focus on both intraindividual and interindividual development. We address several topics related to adult development and aging in a lifespan perspective. First, we review descriptive research on the relationship between age, cohort, and autobiographical memory including the sampling of memories associated with adolescence and early adulthood. Second, we will examine the impact of emotions and emotional development on autobiographical memory. Third, we will examine the role of emerging developmental neuroscience to account for changes in memory performance, especially the later years. Fourth, we will examine the rapidly growing field of narrative studies with a focus on the role of lifespan perspectives in the integration of autobiographical memory research and the study of narrative. Fifth, we discuss the value of the lifespan perspective for integrating the study of culture, autobiographical memory, life scripts, and perceived development. We conclude by outlining key research objectives for future research in the area of autobiographical memory development in adulthood.
  
  

• Robyn Fivush, Emory University
  
  

  Developing an autobiographical voice through family reminiscing

  The stories we tell about ourselves define who we are for ourselves through time, and in relation to others.  Through telling and sharing the stories of our lives, we create ever more coherent and meaningful life narratives.  Intriguingly, this process begins early in development, during the preschool years, as parents and children first begin to share the past in reminiscing, and family reminiscing continues to be a critical context for the development of autobiographical narratives through adolescence.  Moreover, this process is gendered such that mothers are more elaborative and more emotionally expressive during reminiscing than are fathers, and both parents are more elaborative and emotionally expressive when reminiscing with daughters compared to sons.  Gender differences in children’s autobiographical narratives emerge by the end of the preschool years, and are maintained throughout adolescence.  Relations between family reminiscing and children’s emerging autobiographical narratives indicate that children are developing an individual narrative style, or voice, through participating in family reminiscing, and autobiographical voice is linked to emerging identity throughout childhood and adolescence. 
  
  

• Tilmann Habermas, Frankfurt University
  
  

  Psychodynamic compared to cognitive concepts of AM
  
  

  The main thesis of the psychoanalytic theory of memory is that failure and distortion in autobiographical memory retrieval may be non-consciously motivated. This thesis constitutes the dynamic concept of the unconscious. Other central assumptions are that motivated distortions regard mainly the time of remembering, not the original experience, that repressed or distorted memories tend to return involuntarily, and that a mental mechanism non-consciously checks memories for their compatibility with the current self view. Three aspects of psychodynamic theories that seem to differ from current theories of AM will be discussed in more detail: a hierarchical model of emotional memory based on mnemonic modalities, spanning from action to perceptual to language-based representations, a reconstructive view of memory that gives ample room to reasoning and narration in the process of remembering, and a stress on the interpersonal nature of both central emotional memories and of the process of remembering.
  
  

• Morris Moscovitch, University of Toronto
  
  

  Memory consolidation past and present: The contribution of research on autobiographical memory

  Abstract: The idea that older memories are more resilient than recent ones is one of the oldest in psychology. The modern version of this idea states that episodic memories are initially represented by ensembles of hippocampal-neocortical neurons. Over time, memories are consolidated in neocortex, where they can be represented and retrieved independently of the hippocampus. Research on autobiographical memory, which is a type of episodic memory, has challenged the notion that the role of the hippocampus is time limited. Indeed, in the extreme, it has even undermined the notion that long-term (systems) consolidation is a viable concept. Instead, research on humans and non-humans suggest that rather than being consolidated, some memories are transformed, and it is the character of the newly-transformed memory that determines the brain regions that represent it.
  
  

• David Pillemer, University of New Hampshire
  
  

  Directive Functions of Autobiographical Memory: A Reconceptualization

  Researchers have identified several overarching functions served by autobiographical memory: self, social and directive. In current theoretical models, definitions of these functional categories are overly broad and imprecise. In particular, analyses of the directive function lack focus. Proposed functions include using memories to solve specific problems, to make decisions, to learn from one’s mistakes, to shape attitudes, to motivate behavior, to guide the pursuit of a life goal, and to predict the future. Directive functions can be defined and measured more precisely using dimensions that reflect several important dichotomies: aware versus unaware uses of memory; content specific versus content general effects; purposeful versus involuntary retrieval; and self-reported versus behavioral outcomes. New data illustrate the potential advantages of a more multi-faceted, precise and nuanced conceptualization of directive functions.

  
  
• David C. Rubin, Duke University
  
  

  The basic systems theory of autobiographical memory

  Unlike simple laboratory stimuli, autobiographical memories routinely involve visual, auditory, olfactory, spatial, linguistic, emotional, and narrative information.  Behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies show that each of these forms of information is supported by a system with its own well-documented functions, neural substrates, processes, structures, and kinds of schemata.  Understanding the process of constructing autobiographical memories requires the understanding the individual contributions of these systems.  It also requires understanding the several ways the systems interact in their initial binding at encoding and in search and elaboration at retrieval.  Behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies of undergraduates, older adults, and clinical populations will be used to illustrate the role of and effects of changes in functioning of the systems.

The conference "Theoretical perspectives on autobiographical memory" is being held:

13-16 June 2010 at Department of Psychology, Aarhus University