title: Chronologically organized structure in autobiographical memory search.
abstract: Each of us has a rich set of autobiographical memories that provides us with a coherent story of our lives. These memories are known to be highly structured both thematically and temporally. However, it is not known how we naturally tend to explore the mental timeline of our memories. Here we developed a novel cued retrieval paradigm in order to investigate the temporal element of memory search. We found that, when asked to search for memories in the days immediately surrounding a salient cued event, participants displayed a marked set of temporal biases in their search patterns. Specifically, participants first tended to jump back in time and retrieve memories from the day prior to the cued event. Following this they then transitioned forward in time, and retrieved memories from the day after the cued event. This pattern of results replicated in a second experiment with a much larger group of participants, and a different method of cueing the memories. We argue that this set of temporal biases is consistent with memory search conforming to a temporally ordered narrative structure.
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK ; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto , Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors: Iva K
authors: IK
authors: Brunec
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK.
authors: Martin J
authors: MJ
authors: Chadwick
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK.
authors: Amir-Homayoun
authors: AH
authors: Javadi
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK ; Department of Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco , San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors: Ling
authors: L
authors: Guo
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK.
authors: Charlotte P
authors: CP
authors: Malcolm
authors: Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London , London, UK.
authors: Hugo J
authors: HJ
authors: Spiers
keywords: contextual memory; episodic memory; event boundaries; temporal structure