Term
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Definition
| The concept of the ‘working self' (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) can be thought of as a hierarchy of currently active goals and self-concepts through which experience is encoded and memories constructed. |
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Term
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Definition
| The ‘lifespan retrieval curve' illustrates how frequently autobiographical memories are recalled over different periods in someone's life. The lifespan retrieval curve is characterized by periods of childhood amnesia, the reminiscence bump and recency. |
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Term
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Definition
| The component of the lifespan retrieval curve when rememberers were aged 10 to 30 years. |
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Term
| Self-defining experiences |
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Definition
| Memories from the period of the reminiscence bump help to define identity (Conway, 1996) and, because of this, they endure in memory in a highly accessible form. |
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Term
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Definition
General events refer to a variety of autobiographical knowledge structures
Single events (e.g. the day we went to London)
Repeated events (e.g. work meetings)
Extended events (e.g. a holiday in Spain).
‘Mini-histories' structured around episodic memories of goal attainment in developing skills, knowledge and personal relationships.
Experiences of particular significance for the self and act as reference points for other associated general.
Other general events may be grouped together because of their emotional similarity |
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Term
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Definition
| Memories for the acquisition of skills (e.g. riding a bicycle or driving a car) |
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Term
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Definition
| Lifetime periods, like general events, contain representations of locations, others, activities, feelings and goals common to the period they represent. They effectively encapsulate a period in memory and in so doing may provide ways in which access to autobiographical knowledge can be limited, channelled or directed. |
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Term
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Definition
| A life story is some more or less coherent theme or set of themes that characterize, identify and give meaning to a whole life. A life story consists of several life story schema, which associate together selective autobiographical knowledge to define a theme. |
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Term
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Definition
| A schema is a memory structure that encapsulates an event such that common parts are fixed, while variable parts occur as ‘slots'. Thus a schema for ‘going to the cinema' would have predefined common parts (such as queuing for tickets, buying popcorn) and slots for variable parts (which cinema we went to, who I was with, what film we saw). |
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Term
| Partonomic knowledge structures |
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Definition
| Partonomic refers to the way that a specific episodic memory is part of a general event, which in turn is part of a lifetime period, which is part of a life schema |
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Term
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Definition
| Recollective experience is the sense or experience of the self in the past and is induced by images, feelings and other memory details that come to mind during remembering. |
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Term
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Definition
| In retrieval mode attention, or part thereof, is directed inwards towards internal representations of knowledge, and conscious awareness becomes dominated by these representa tions. As a memory is formed the rememberer's awareness becomes emotionally influenced by recollective experience and a powerful sense of the self in the past arises. |
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Term
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Definition
| Singer and Salovey (1993) proposed that each individual had a set of self-defining memories that contained critical knowledge of progress on the attainment of long-term goals. |
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Term
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Definition
| Generative retrieval occurs when remembering is intentional and the knowl edge base is iteratively sampled as a memory is effortfully constructed. |
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Term
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Definition
| In direct retrieval a cue causes a pattern of activation in autobiographical knowledge (AK) that stabilizes as a specific autobiographical memory and bypasses the stages of generative retrieval |
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Term
| Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) |
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Definition
| PTSD is made up of several components (American Psychiatric Association, 1994): the traumatic event; response at the time of trauma; and subsequent psychological symptoms. |
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Term
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Definition
| PTSD sufferers rapidly learn what triggers their re-experiencing intrusive memories and, once learned, such potent cues are avoided, which can sometimes lead to dysfunctional behaviour, e.g. avoiding all red objects of a certain size. |
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