Themes, events, and episodes in autobiographical memory.

Full Abstract

The process by which experience is divided into events was examined. Experiment 1 involved diarists recording their experiences over a 3-month period. Diary entries were later transcribed onto cards and the diarists arranged their cards so as to define events they had experienced, and in a separate phase arranged their cards so as to describe the themes that reflected their life. Examination of event- and theme-building strategies indicated that boundaries were frequently used, and events and themes were often formed from clusters of experience combined using content association rather than temporal sequence. Experiment 2 involved photographs taken by the participants, employed the same procedures as in Experiment 1, and revealed event- and theme-building strategies similar to those identified in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3 the size of the stimulus set from which events and themes were constructed was manipulated; this did not influence construction strategies. Overall, the experiments show that both autobiographical events and themes frequently consist of episodes taken from more than 1 day.

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Author information

Author/s: Burt, Christopher D B (CD); Kemp, Simon (S); Conway, Martin A (MA);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. c.burt(-atsign-)psyc.canterbury.ac.nz

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Mar; vol 31 (issue 2) : pp 317-25

Dates: Created 2003/05/16; Completed 2003/06/17; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12749473, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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