title: Remembering, imagining, false memories & personal meanings.
abstract: The Self-Memory System encompasses the working self, autobiographical memory and episodic memory. Specific autobiographical memories are patterns of activation over knowledge structures in autobiographical and episodic memory brought about by the activating effect of cues. The working self can elaborate cues based on the knowledge they initially activate and so control the construction of memories of the past and the future. It is proposed that such construction takes place in the remembering-imagining system - a window of highly accessible recent memories and simulations of near future events. How this malfunctions in various disorders is considered as are the implication of what we term the modern view of human memory for notions of memory accuracy. We show how all memories are to some degree false and that the main role of memories lies in generating personal meanings.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Memory & Law, Department of Psychology, City University London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: Martin.Conway.1@city.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Conway
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, United Kingdom. Electronic address: C.Loveday@westminster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Loveday
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Autobiographical memory; Episodic future thinking; Episodic memory; Imagining; Personal meanings; Simulation; Working self