Event components in autobiographical memories.
Autobiographical memories contain activity, location, temporal, and participant information (Lancaster & Barsalou, 1997). Our study analysed potential dominance of activity information in autobiographical memories. The results indicated stability in dominance of the activity component, defined as similar occurrence in first and subsequent reports, and a relative absence of the temporal component in these verbal reports. Activity dominance also occurred when activity information from the verbal reports was used as a retrieval cue for a subsequent report. Temporal information demonstrated a greater lack of facilitation as a retrieval cue. These findings can be explained from the perspective of embodied cognition in which underlying perceptual states that contain activity, location, and other participant information are reconstructed during retrieval, whereas temporal information, as a more abstract component, is not.
Dijkstra
Katinka
K
Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 32306-1270, USA. dijkstra@psy.fsu.edu
Misirlisoy
Mine
M
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011601:Psychophysics