constructive and reconstructive memory

In this chapter, we will explore the consequences of using naturalistic stimuli on the study of memory and illustrate our arguments with data from one of our previously published studies (Hemmer & Steyvers, 2009c). Goschke & Kuhl 1993) or differences between event-based versus time-based prospective memory (e.g. In this view, constituent features of a memory are distributed widely across different parts of the brain, such that no single location contains a literal trace or engram that corresponds to a specific experience (cf. In: Schacter D.L, editor. Webreconstructive memory the process of remembering conceived as involving the recreation of an experience or event that has been only partially stored in memory. The foregoing research provides not only insights into the constructive nature of episodic memory, but also some clues regarding the functional basis of constructive memory processes. What does this say about our ability to recall memories? Szpunar K.K, Watson J.M, McDermott K.B. I suggest below that field and observer perspectives are different ways of thinking about the same past event and both can provide an epistemic benefit for the subject. When we remember an event, is the memory an exact reproduction or is it altered by our current frame of reference? same/new) indicated significant activity in a network of regions previously associated with episodic remembering, including hippocampus/MTL, several regions within prefrontal cortex, medial and inferior parietal lobes and ventral temporal/occipital regions. 2007). Tulving E. Episodic memory: from mind to brain. Saxe & Kanwisher 2003). This condition served as a non-coalitional baseline measurement. Associative illusions of memory. 1990; Schacter et al. Squire et al. (2005) examined whether use of an implicit task might reveal intact retention of gist information in amnesics. Memory distortion: how minds, A number of PET and fMRI studies have provided evidence that brain activity can distinguish between true recognition and related false recognition (for review, see Schacter & Slotnick 2004). In search of memory traces. Participants made significantly more old responses to studied shapes than to new related shapes and also made significantly more old responses to new related shapes (i.e. Explain how the constructive processing view of memory retrieval accounts for forgetting and inaccuracies in memory. The ease with which such memories may be manipulated or constructed has contributed to the development of an entire new field of false memory research, a field whose topics often overlap with those of eyewitness testimony research (see False Memories, Psychology of). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Such patients also sometimes show pathological levels of false recognition, claiming incorrectly that novel information is familiar (e.g. Delbecq-Derouesn J, Beauvois M.F, Shallice T. Preserved recall versus impaired recognition. 1996c) and the older adults were the age-matched control group for Alzheimer's patients (data for older adults and Alzheimer's patients are obtained from Budson et al. Squire L.R, Stark C.E, Clark R.E. On the subsequent stem completion test, participants were provided three-letter word beginnings that had multiple possible completions; some could be completed with previously studied words (e.g. The representation of intentions: persisting activation in memory. We propose that this apparent regularity across neural regions and across studies reflects the more intensive constructive processes required by imagining future events relative to retrieving past events. Constructive memory and memory distortions: a parallel-distributed processing approach. The two conditions to the right within each panel involved presenting two set of cues of political party support: wearing political party buttons and espousing party-typical political opinions (the parties were U.S. Republican and Democrat). Memory research may focus on the organizing relations among concepts (Anderson & Bower, 1973, Collins & Quillian, 1969, Mandler 1962) or on effects of the content of a particular schema, concept, or stereotype (Anderson & Pichert, 1978; Bransford, 1979). A persons present knowledge and goals may shape For example, Schacter et al. However, such disorders may arise for a wide variety of reasons. The only difference found in the reanalysis was that categorization by race is slightly lower in one of the two partisan conditions, and categorization by button color is somewhat lower in two of the three baseline conditions; the latter effect not being of theoretical interest. Carrying rocks for use as missiles at some future point may have been vital, and a capacity to plan for this might have been under strong selection pressure (see Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). RoedigerIII, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001. Because observer perspectives involve information that was not available to perception then they must be distorted. How might this alter your memories of travel, events, or other information that you learn? D'Argembeau A, Van der Linden M. Individual differences in the phenomenology of mental time travel. Some of these studies have supported what Schacter & Slotnick (2004) termed the sensory reactivation hypothesis, which holds that true memories contain more sensory and perceptual details than do related false memories (e.g. Retrieval conditions and false recognition: testing the distinctiveness heuristic. Therefore, although schema can aid encoding and retrieval of information, they can also lead to errors. For example, Morewedge et al. Anderson J.R, Schooler L.J. When compared with negative events, positive events were associated with subjective ratings of greater re-experiencing for past events and greater pre-experiencing for future events. Reconstruction of knapping routines (using refit data) suggests that at least by the Middle Pleistocene hominins produced stone tools in one site to use them later at another (e.g., Hallos, 2005). In: Schacter D.L, editor. Kahn I, Davachi L, Wagner A.D. Functional-neuroanatomic correlates of recollection: implications for models of recognition memory. Standard signal detection models of memory typically do not distinguish between related and unrelated false alarms: both are seen to result from a single underlying process that supports familiarity or memory strength sufficient to surpass a subject's criterion for saying old (e.g. Dalla Barba G, Cappelletti Y.J, Signorini M, Denes G. Confabulation: remembering another past, planning another future. Miller M.B, Wolford G.L. Sagittal slice (x=4) illustrating the striking commonalities in the medial left prefrontal and parietal regions engaged when (a) remembering the past and (b) imagining the future (adapted from Addis et al. Fernndez outlines a functionally dualistic account of memory. With a view towards examining the functions served by a constructive episodic memory system, we consider recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies indicating that some types of memory distortions reflect the operation of adaptive processes. The only region exhibiting an interaction between temporal direction (i.e. in press). 2001b). Shallice T, Burgess P. The domain of supervisory processes and the temporal organization of behaviour. Importantly, these regions were not activated to the same magnitude when imagining events involving Bill Clinton, demonstrating a neural signature that is unique to the construction of events in one's personal past or future and is not shared by the construction of event representations per se. Houghton Mifflin; Boston, MA; New York, NY: 2001. On a subsequent oldnew recognition test containing studied words (e.g. 10, we can see that there are no substantive changes, save one: categorization by race in the partisan statements at recall condition is now slightly lower than previously reported, and is now nearly identical to the level of racial categorization found in the partisan buttons at recall condition to its left. Research on the topic of affective forecastingwhich examines how people predict, and often mispredict, future happiness (Gilbert 2006)has revealed important interactions between memory of past events and predictions of future happiness. More directly related to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, D'Argembeau & Van der Linden (2004) directly compared re-experiencing past episodes and pre-experiencing episodes in the future. Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events. Gusnard D.A, Akbudak E, Shulman G.L, Raichle M.E. Threats, in this hypothesis, are therefore overrepresented (retrieved selectively) in dreams because this facilitates the ultimate goal of detecting and managing future dangers when and if they arise. More recent fMRI studies have attempted to overcome this limitation using event-related designs to yield information regarding the neural bases of specific past and future events. Semantic versus phonological false recognition in aging and Alzheimer's disease. Roediger H.L, McDermott K.B. Much less is known about the capacity of amnesic patients to imagine future experiences. Bartlett noticed that other details were likely to be omitted from the recall, including hunting for seals, details surrounding a canoe trip, and the names of the towns in the story. Since amnesic patients can show intact priming effects on various implicit or indirect memory tasks (for review, see Schacter et al. Further, there was evidence of common MTL activity, and Okuda et al. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Think about the differences in courtroom testimony between two witnesses: what is the reality? Moreover, Williams and colleagues demonstrated that in healthy individuals, manipulations that reduced the specificity of past events (e.g. In particular, higher levels of activity during the future task were evident in the right frontopolar cortex, consistent with the association of this region with prospective memory (Burgess et al. Balota D.A, Cortese M.J, Duchek J.M, Adams D, Roediger H.L, McDermott K.B, Yerys B.E. Importantlyand regardless of the overall downward shift in button categorizationthe increase in categorization that occurs between the baseline and the partisan conditions remains either the same or is even slightly increased in the new reanalysis. Event representations also contained episodic and contextual imagery, perhaps related to activation of precuneus (e.g. FOIA When expert testimony is not admitted, the single most common reason given is that the content of the testimony is merely a matter of common sense a conclusion that is seriously challenged by empirical research (Schmechel et al., 2006). The .gov means its official. Bechara A, Damasio A.R, Damasio H, Anderson S.W. Importantly, however, they also reported several notable commonalities between remembering the past and imagining the future. same/related new) compared with unrelated false recognition (i.e. Bjork R.A, Bjork E.L. On the adaptive aspects of retrieval failure in autobiographical memory. 1988). However, only the future task requires that event details gleaned from various past events are flexibly recombined into a novel future event and, further, that this event is plausible given one's intentions for the future. Dorrit Billman, in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 1996. 2003; Addis et al. Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred. The ghosts of past and future. The reality of repressed memories. During recognition testing, participants made recognition judgements about old studied shapes, new prototypical shapes visually related to studied shapes and new shapes unrelated to studied shapes. The constructive episodic simulation hypothesis does not imply that the only function of episodic memory is to allow us to simulate future events, nor do we believe that its role in simulation of the future constitutes the sole reason why episodic memory is primarily constructive rather than reproductive. Such memories may help the individual achieve one of her goals, and often these goals involve feeling a certain kind of emotion, especially a positive one. Ingvar 1985; Stuss & Benson 1986; Fuster 1989; Shallice & Burgess 1996; Mesulam 2002). Previous research using a similar paradigm with healthy subjects revealed the existence of a false priming effect: compared with a baseline condition, participants were more likely to complete stems of related lures with the lure item following study of a list of semantic associates (not surprisingly, priming was also observed for previously studied words, e.g. The more time that had passed, the less that would be remembered by participants. In a number of studies using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), subjects studied lists of DRM semantic associates and were later scanned while making judgements about old words, related lures and unrelated lures. The Quantitative Approach to Decision Making: Methods, Purpose & Benefits, Psychological Research & Experimental Design, All Teacher Certification Test Prep Courses, Introduction to Strategic Decision Making, Strategic Thinking in Making Business Decisions, Quantitative Decision Making Tools: Decision Trees, Payback Analysis & Simulations, What Is a Decision Tree? We compared activity during the past and future tasks with control tasks that required semantic and imagery processing, respectively. BA, Brodmann area. From this perspective, representations of both past and future events may be richly detailed, vivid and contextually specific. This characterization of memory dates at least to the pioneering ideas of Bartlett (1932) and has been a major influence in contemporary cognitive psychology for nearly 40 years. Any discussion of constructive memory must acknowledge the pioneering ideas of Bartlett (1932), who rejected the notion that memory involves a passive replay of a past experience via the awakening of a literal copy of experience. B. (2002) reported that even in this meaning test, amnesic patients provided fewer old responses to semantically related lure words than do controls, thereby supporting the idea of a degraded gist representation. Disordered memory awareness: recollective confabulation in two cases of persistent deja vecu. Bjork & Bjork 1988; Anderson & Schooler 1991; Schacter 1999, 2001). Williams J.M, Ellis N.C, Tyers C, Healy H, Rose G, MacLeod A.K. 2001). 1999). Interestingly, this common pastfuture network is remarkably similar to the network consistently implicated in the retrieval of episodic memories of past autobiographical events (Maguire 2001), again consistent with the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis. - Examples, Advantages & Role in Management, Using Simulation to Analyze and Solve Business Problems, The Monte Carlo Simulation: Scope & Common Applications, What is Forecasting in Business? The less we know about an event, the less likely we are to recall it later. There are also two distinct benefits for the individual when a particular memory is properly generated (non-distorted). We thank Moshe Bar, Randy Buckner, Dan Gilbert, Itamar Kahn, Jason Mitchell and Gagan Wig for comments on the paper, and Alana Wong for invaluable aid in preparation of the manuscript. B. Declarative memory orexplicit memory is a memory system that is controlled consciously, intentionally, and flexibly. This leads Fernndez to conclude that it seems that my faculty of memory has not carried out its preservative function adequately while delivering that observer memory (2015: 541). In the foregoing studies, involving meaning tests, participants were asked to remember explicitly aspects of previously presented materials; it is well known that both amnesic and AD patients exhibit deficits on explicit memory tasks. Not all false memories are created equal: the neural basis of false recognition. Race, sex, and age were each crossed with these cues of party support in each of these two conditions. Melo B, Winocur G, Moscovitch M. False recall and false recognition: an examination of the effects of selective and combined lesions to the medial temporal lobe/diencephalon and frontal lobe structures. (2007) examined the ability of five patients with documented bilateral hippocampal amnesia to imagine new experiences. WebA. During the past decade, investigations of memory distortions in other patient populations, as well as neuroimaging studies of accurate versus inaccurate remembering in healthy individuals, have contributed to an increase in research on the cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory (for reviews, see Schacter et al. Klein and Loftus evaluated D. Perceptual false recognition in Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, the right hippocampus was differentially engaged by the future event task, which may reflect the novelty of future events and/or additional relational processing required when one must recombine disparate details into a coherent event. For example, according to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, it should be possible to document a direct link between processes underlying memory distortion and those underlying mental simulations of the future. 16 There are 3 Separate Memory Stores Sensory Memory performs the initial encoding of sensory information for a brief time, usually only a fraction of a second. In virtue of having this memory, I picture the event from the point of view of a nearby pedestrian on the street, thus being able to visualise some details of my own physical appearance while I was at the wheel. Fletcher P, Frith C, Baker S.C, Shallice T, Frackowiak R.S, Dolan R. The mind's eyeprecuneus activation in memory-related imagery. WebReconstruction Principle. In summary, a fundamental and striking phenomena is that concepts permeate every aspect of cognition. The reconstructive model (Braine, 1965; Pollio & Foote, 1971) posits that memories are not stored in LTM as intact units of experience (e.g., like a video recording), but rather as individual details with varying degrees of association to each other. Schacter D.L, Reiman E, Curran T, Sheng Yun L, Bandy D, McDermott K.B, Roediger H.L. In order to fill in the blanks of what we dont remember, we pull from schemas. Patients with hippocampal amnesia cannot imagine new experiences. The previous content of our cooperation project had presented explicit cues of cooperation. In fact, it would seem that on this account all observer perspective memories must be understood as distorted. Making decisions with the future in mind: developmental and comparative identification of mental time travel. Fernndez recognises that on a reconstructive understanding of memory his example of an observer perspective is not distorted: since reconstruction of the past event in memory has happened in such a way that the resulting memory coheres well with my beliefs about my past (2015: 541 fn. Atance C.M, O'Neill D.K. The seven sins of memory: how the mind forgets and remembers. The thin translucent bars depict the previously-reported results, using the old error correction method. Schacter et al. The experts surveyed in Kassin et al.s study reported that in the 960 trials in which they testified, an opposing expert testified in 76 cases (8%). Schacter D.L, Curran T, Galluccio L, Milberg W, Bates J. Subjects were also asked to date past events and estimate the temporal proximity of future events. This schema starts with once upon a time and includes all of the elements of a traditional fairy tale. The cost of this flexibility and constructive processing is reduced accuracy. A later investigation in another patient, D. B., who became amnesic as a result of cardiac arrest and consequent anoxia revealed that he, like K. C., exhibited deficits in both retrieving past events and imagining future events (Klein & Loftus 2002). Burgess & Shallice 1996; Dab et al. familiar people, common activities, Graham et al. How did Federic Bartlett develop his ideas of reconstructive memory and schemas? that are related to a non-presented lure word (e.g. Through basic (now considered classic) experiments, she was able to establish that simple alterations to interview questions can yield significant and (sometimes) lasting alterations to reported memory (Dale, Loftus, & Rathburn, 1978; Loftus & Palmer, 1974, Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). To avoid the. Reconstructive memory is the process in which we recall our memory of an event or a story. Participants described their imaginary scenarios in the presence of a cue card to remind them of the task, and experimenters occasionally probed subjects for further details and elaboration. Every aspect of cognition involves concepts and reliance on concepts is incorporated in any account of cognitive processes. For example, if you listened to a lot of fairy tales as a child, you are likely to develop a schema for fairy tales. Fernndez explains the distortion as follows: Suppose that, years ago, I suffered an accident while driving, and I now remember the accident by having an observer memory of it. butter) and new words that are related to the study list items (e.g. Many questions remain to be addressed regarding the nature of brain activity related to past and future events. The seven sins of memory: insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Overall, the constructions of the hippocampal patients were greatly reduced in richness and content when compared with those of controls. Bartlett argued that perceiving and comprehending events do not simply happen automatically, but that every event of comprehension involves the mental construction of one's understanding of the event in the world. 1988, 1993; Garry et al. Declar- ative memory generally involves some effort and intention, and we can employ memory strategies such as mnemonics to recall information. planning for an asteroid collision), which must instead be considered helpful current implementations of the evolved capacities (Buss, Haselton, Shackelford, Bleske, & Wakefield, 1998). Webfalse memory: n. An imagined event that is believed to be recalled as a memory. Consistent with the results from amnesic and AD patients, these studies have revealed significant and comparable levels of activation in the MTL, including the hippocampus, during both true and false recognition of related lures (e.g. If you see a scene at the beach and are asked to recall it later, you might recall seeing a beach umbrella even if none was present in the actual scene itself, because it is consistent with the general schema of items that belong in a beach scene. Dudai Y, Carruthers M. The Janus face of mnemosyne. Consequently, in the reanalysis we find either the same or negligibly larger effects for categorization by party. Rosenbaum R.S, Kohler S, Schacter D.L, Moscovitch M, Westmacott R, Black S.E, Gao F, Tulving E. The case of K. C.: contributions of a memory-impaired person to memory theory. Phenomena from reconstructive memory to encoding specificity can be seen as effects of established concepts on the encoding or retrieval of new material. Time and the privileged observer. Contrast analyses identified a number of regions exhibiting differentially more activity for future events, including the right frontal pole and hippocampus. Examples of these studies will be described later in this chapter. By contrast, controls showed significant priming for both studied words and related lure words. Evolutionary theories about cognitive processes often hypothesize adaptation to particular environmental problems faced in ancestral environments (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1995). Creating false memories: remembering words not presented in lists. On a storage conception, the function of memory is to preserve past perceptual content. Priming on perceptual implicit memory test can be achieved through presentation of associates. Mark Steyvers, Pernille Hemmer, in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2012. 05:10. The concept of constructive memory holds that we use a variety of information (perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, etc.) Okuda J, Fujii T, Yamadori A, Kawashima R, Tsukiura T, Fukatsu R, Suzuki K, Itoh M, Fukuda H. Participation of the prefrontal cortices in prospective memory: evidence from a PET study in humans. Thus, a memory system that simply stored rote records of what happened in the past would not be well suited to simulating future events, which will probably share some similarities with past events while differing in other respects. The idea of schema is still used in psychology and cognitive therapy today. near versus distant) was an inferior region in left parahippocampal gyrus (BA 36). They have to repeat the word or phrase to the person next to them, and so on. 13 chapters | Furthermore, a number of investigators have recognized that information about past experiences is useful only to the extent that it allows us to anticipate what may happen in the future (e.g. For example, Anderson & Schooler (1991) contend that memory is adapted to retain information that is most likely to be needed in the environment in which it operates. Recall that on the storage conception of memory, the function of memory is to preserve past perceptual content. Deese J. In contrast to the extensive cognitive literature on episodic memory of past experiences, there is little evidence concerning simulation of future episodes and a virtual absence of direct comparisons between remembering the past and imagining the future. 's deficit in thinking about the future seemed specific to his personal future: he had little difficulty imagining possible future developments in the public domain (e.g. Abstract. Create your account. This extensive pattern of common activity was not present during the construction of past and future events (figure 4); it only emerged during the elaboration of these events (shown here, relative to elaboration phase of a semantic and an imagery control task). Episodic processes, for instance, enable people to collaboratively share stories and plans for the management of potential danger, such as the collective production of hypothetical battle strategies if another group were to attack (Suddendorf, 2013). In contrast, in the partisan statements at recall conditions, the political party buttons were removed during the recall task, but the statements remained intact, including the partisan portion. These marked similarities of activation were also evident in areas of the medial temporal lobe (bilateral parahippocampal gyrus) and lateral cortex (left temporal pole and left bilateral inferior parietal cortex). First, we will consider research concerning false recognition in patients with memory disorders that provides evidence indicating that false recognition rather than reflecting the operation of a malfunctioning or flawed memory system is sometimes a marker of a healthy memory system, such that damage to the system can reduce, rather than increase, the incidence of this memory error. Graham K.S, Lee A.C, Brett M, Patterson K. The neural basis of autobiographical and semantic memory: new evidence from three PET studies. Remembering the past and imagining the future: a neural model of spatial memory and imagery. Although Bartlett did not advocate the extreme position sometimes ascribed to him that memory is always inaccurate (Ost & Costall 2002), he clearly rejected the importance of reproductive memory: the first notion to get rid of is that memory is primarily or literally reduplicative, or reproductive. 2004; Thompson 2005). The two conditions to the right within each panel involved presenting two set of cues of political party support: wearing political party buttons and espousing party-typical political opinions (the parties were U.S. Republican and Democrat). sleep). Several researchers have grappled with this issue and proposed various reasons why human memory, in contrast to video recorders or computers, does not store and retrieve exact replicas of experience (e.g. How does reconstructive memory In such cases, the opposing expert might challenge the generalizability of the research, question the extent of expert agreement about certain factors, or challenge the defense experts conclusions based on the literature. When given word cues and instruction to recall an episode from the past or imagine a future episode, depressed patients showed reduced specificity in their retrieval of both past and future autobiographical events. While on the narrative conception, the memory is distorted when it does not fit well with the contents of the subjects beliefs about herself and her past and, for that reason, it does not fit into the subjects narrative of her life (Fernndez, 2015: 540). political events and issues), performing similar to control subjects. Many other pressures may have contributed to the evolution of human foresight and threat management. 1. Budson et al. The effect of temporal distance on neural activity in these two regions was also examined, and remarkably, in eight out of the nine foci the same neural response to temporal distance (i.e. Bartlett contrasted reproductive memory (veridical, rote forms of memory, such as reproducing a telephone number) with reconstructive memory and argued that the latter was more typical of our uses of memory outside laboratory and educational circumstances. And because empirical evidence shows that observer perspectives involve a dampening of the phenomenal properties (emotional and sensory) associated with remembering an event, then having an observer memory of the traumatic event should alleviate the suffering associated with reliving it in memory (Fernndez, 2015: 541). Schacter D.L. Taken together, the pattern of deficits in these patients suggests that imagining personal future events may involve processes above and beyond the general processes involved in constructing non-personal events and generating images, and shares common processes with episodic remembering. Thus, it is conceivable that patients do form and retain a normal gist representation, but do not express this information on explicit tests.

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