{"id":36,"date":"2016-03-03T16:08:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T16:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dev.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/?page_id=36"},"modified":"2021-06-03T09:52:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T09:52:31","slug":"autobiographical-memory","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/home\/autobiographical-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Autobiographical memory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more-->Research evidence shows that young infants can form memories. Infants show delayed imitation of other&#8217;s actions, can find objects after a delay, and once verbal, can produce reports of events experienced up to 1 year previous. However, as adults, we are unlikely to remember experiencing events prior to 2 years, and our memories of early life are limited in both quantity and quality. Several theories exist to explain this &#8216;infantile amnesia&#8217;.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_123\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-123\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2016\/03\/IMAG0254.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-123 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2016\/03\/IMAG0254-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Adults don't remember events prior to their second birthday\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-123\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Young infants can make memories, but as adults, our memory for early life events is poor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One intuitive theory is that until memories can be filed as part of an elaborated and organised self-concept, they are difficult to either store effectively in the long term and\/or retrieve (see <a href=\"http:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;uid=1993-21176-001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Howe &amp; Courage, 1993<\/a>). \u00a0By this account, it is not until the <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/home\/self-evaluation-tests\/\">self-concept<\/a> develops at around 2 years that memories of &#8216;me&#8217; are likely to be formed. Retrospective reports suggest 2 years as the earliest onset for expressible autobiographical memories, with 3 or 4 years as the average age of the first memory, and relatively few memories existing prior to the age of 8 years. \u00a0This developmental pattern for autobiographical memory fits with the idea that there may be a gradual growth in the self-concept which impacts on the depth of processing afforded by self-referent processing. To explore this idea, our project aimed to determine if there was an association between the magnitude of self-memory effects, growth in the self-concept, and the narratives that children are able to provide about events they have experienced.<\/p>\n<p>To measure autobiographical memories we asked children what they could remember about three events in their past a) their first day of nursery\/school b) their last birthday and c) their memories of the first time they met the researcher (this allowed us to assess memory for a relatively recent event, for which the researcher could assess accuracy).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"parent":26,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-36","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36\/revisions\/233"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/themeinmemory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}