constructive and reconstructive memory

An event-related fMRI study of veridical and illusory recognition memory. Brain regions involved in prospective memory as determined by positron emission tomography. Balota D.A, Cortese M.J, Duchek J.M, Adams D, Roediger H.L, McDermott K.B, Yerys B.E. sleep). Much research has focused on elucidating the constructive nature of episodic memory, and a growing number of recent investigations have recognized the close relationship between remembering the past and imagining the future. 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). D'Argembeau and van der Linden found that remembered past events were associated with richer and more vivid sensory and contextual details than were imagined future events, consistent with previous observations concerning phenomenological qualities of remembered versus imagined events (e.g. In the partisan buttons at recall conditions, targets continued to wear their political party buttons, but the statements being attributed were stripped of their partisan portion (the statements were designed to contain both partisan and non-partisanor even slightly counter-partisanportions). 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). According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, the adaptive nature of such activity is specifically related to its role in simulating the future. The primary application of estimator variable research is expert testimony about the psychology of eyewitness memory. Regardless of time period, both the past and future conditions elicited shared activity in bilateral frontopolar cortex, probably reflecting the self-referential nature of both types of event representations (Craik et al. Corresponding to these two functions of memory are two related notions of distortion in memory. None of these behavioural strategies would emerge without the capacity to represent future dangers that would otherwise cause harm or those that have already done so in the past. Comparing the original and reanalyzed effect sizes for rex, sex, and age across all conditions in Fig. D'Argembeau A, Van der Linden M. Phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself back into the past and forward into the future: influence of valence and temporal distance. This is the scenario in which the event constituted a traumatic experience for the subject in the past. However, in the last decades it has generally been taken to mean that our memories are inaccurate or distorted. These two facts impose a simple but important constraint on theories of concept learning: Accounts of concept learning should eventually be responsible for explaining how concepts supporting each of these uses come to be learned. More recently, D'Argembeau & Van der Linden (2006) extended these results by showing that individual differences in imagery ability and emotion regulation strategies are similarly related to past and future events. 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. Slotnick & Schacter (2004) used a prototype recognition paradigm in which the critical materials were abstract, unfamiliar shapes; all shapes in the study list were visually similar to a non-presented prototype (figure 2). Since we do not frequently need to remember all the exact details of our experiences, an adapted system need not slavishly preserve all such details as a default option; instead, it should record and preserve such details over time only when circumstances indicate that they are likely to be needed, as human memory tends to do. Examples of these studies will be described later in this chapter. Savannah-dwelling bipedal hominins may have relied increasingly on throwing stones at predators (Calvin, 1982), and eventually to bring down prey. For instance, both event types were associated with activity in left anterior temporal cortex, a region thought to mediate conceptual and semantic information about the self and one's life (e.g. Raven Press; New York, NY: 1986. Conceptual change through development or instruction (Carey, 1985; Chi, Slotta, & DeLeuuw, 1994; Inhelder & Piaget, 1964; Smith, Carey, & Wiser, 1985) is one area of cognitive psychology that addresses learning new or altering old concepts. There may be a bidirectional flow of influence between the nature of the script and the nature of the recalled details. The medial temporal lobe. Creating false memories: remembering words not presented in lists. 1999). Interestingly, this early visual area activity for old shapes occurred equally strongly when subjects responded old and when they responded new to the studied shapes, suggesting that this putative sensory reactivation effect reflected some type of non-conscious or implicit memory (Slotnick & Schacter 2004; for further evidence, see Slotnick & Schacter 2006). As the previously-reported effect sizes for categorization by button color were already quite low and near zero, the additional lowering seen the new reanalysis moves the level of categorization to negative categorization. 1998; Burgess et al. This condition served as a non-coalitional baseline measurement. 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. For this reason, too, memory can be said literally to produce new beliefs. Support for this interpretation comes from a study that used a modified version of the DRM semantic associates procedure (Verfaellie et al. Instead, the function of memory is to reconstruct the past in order to help us build a smooth and robust narrative of our lives (Fernndez, 2015: 540, emphasis added). Such observations highlight the importance of thinking broadly about the functions of episodic memory in constructing our personal and social worlds. 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. 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. In order to justify this claim Fernndez must first show that observer perspectives are indeed distorted, and he suggests that From a preservative point of view, it seems quite clear that they are (2015: 541). Slotnick S.D, Dodson C.S. All three social categories were first presented in a neutral, non-partisan context (the left-most condition with each panel). Event representations also contained episodic and contextual imagery, perhaps related to activation of precuneus (e.g. To recall the event, we have to pull from schema to fill in the blanks. Johnson et al. He uses a game similar to that of Telephone to support the idea of reconstructive memory. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. 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). Many other pressures may have contributed to the evolution of human foresight and threat management. 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. Loftus E.F. Similarly, memory for gist, which is sometimes responsible for false recognition, is also crucial for such adaptive capacities as categorization and comprehension and may facilitate transfer and generalization across tasks (McClelland 1995). However, consistent with the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, the existing evidence indicates that at least some amnesics have great difficulty imagining their personal futures. (2007) divided the past and future tasks into two phases: (i) an initial construction phase during which participants generated a past or future event in response to an event cue (e.g. 1993; Schacter 1999). The importance of constructive processes in memory has a rich history, one that stretches back more than 125 years. Breakdowns in this process of formulating a retrieval description as a result of damage to the frontal cortex and other regions can sometimes produce striking memory errors, including confabulations regarding events that never happened (e.g. A conjunction analysis of activity during the construction of past and future events revealed a few regions exhibiting common activity, such as left hippocampus and right occipital gyrus (BA 19). Amnesics also show reduced false recognition of non-studied visual shapes that are perceptually similar to previously presented shapes (Koutstaal et al. Episodic memory is widely conceived as a fundamentally constructive, rather than reproductive, process that is prone to various kinds of errors and illusions. In: Schacter D.L, editor. This project explored the boundary conditions of what constituents a coalition to the human mind. Schacter D.L, Dobbins I.G, Schnyer D.M. The role of criterion shift in false memory. if it is possible to change, and in fact diminish, the phenomenal properties of a memory of a past event by switching from remembering the event from the field perspective to remembering it from the observer perspective, then one can imagine a scenario in which it may be advantageous for a subject to perform that switch. This change isolates categorization by political party above and beyond stimulus idiosyncrasies, and thus it is this change that we are interested in. Gilbert D.T. prototypes) than to new unrelated shapes. Both patient groups show significantly reduced recognition accuracy (i.e. Many factors influence a person's recall of a brief event and because human memory is assumed to involve both constructive and reconstructive processes, information considered or received by the witness following the event may also contribute to the specifics of what is ultimately recalled (see Reconstructive Memory, Psychology of). We have been able to sketch the issues that seem most central in understanding the potential emotion-related causes of confabulation. 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. 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). Atance & O'Neill 2001, 2005; Suddendorf & Busby 2003, 2005; Hancock 2005; Buckner & Carroll 2007). Morewedge C.K, Gilbert D.T, Wilson T.D. 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). Craik F.I, Moroz T.M, Moscovitch M, Stuss D.T, Winocur G, Tulving E, Kapur S. In search of the self: a positron emission tomography study. Basically, any details that didnt fit into British culture at the time were more likely to be omitted. Schacter D.L, Curran T, Galluccio L, Milberg W, Bates J. As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Dab S, Claes T, Morais J, Shallice T. Confabulation with a selective descriptor process impairment. Mark Steyvers, Pernille Hemmer, in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 2012. Reconstructive memory 2022-11-08 Constructive memory Rating: 7,8/10 1136reviews Constructive memory is a term used to describe the process by which our memories are reconstructed Priming on perceptual implicit memory test can be achieved through presentation of associates. 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. in press). Memory reflects a blend of . By contrast, however, two related lines of research that have emerged during the past decade indicate that some types of memory distortion reflect the adaptive operation of a healthy memory system. Slotnick & Schacter (2004; see also Kahn et al. Categorization effect sizes for race, sex, age, and cues of political party support. bea___) and some with related lures (e.g. Some scholars (e.g., Konecni and Ebbesen, 1986; Elliott, 1993) have questioned the extent to which eyewitness studies, which are mainly conducted in the laboratory, generalize to actual crimes and therefore challenge the appropriateness of expert testimony. This latter finding fits nicely with the observations noted earlier from Hassabis et al. Indeed, information is not invulnerable to change On a storage conception, the function of memory is to preserve past perceptual content. We have contributed to this hypothesis by including another potentially relevant aspect to this model: the role that the emotionally positive experience of the confabulation may have in perpetuating a pathological cognitive-emotional loop. We think that a system built along the lines of the constructive principles that we and others have attributed to episodic memory is better suited to the job of simulating future happenings. Implicit false memory: effects of modality and multiple study presentations on long lived semantic priming. Johnson 1991; Moscovitch 1995; Burgess & Shallice 1996; Dalla Barba et al. 2004, Miller and Gazzaniga 1998, Weinstein and Shanks, 2010). 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. Kahn I, Davachi L, Wagner A.D. Functional-neuroanatomic correlates of recollection: implications for models of recognition memory. Some specific words were likely to be replaced or altered so that they fit into British culture. tired, bed, awake, rest, dream, night, etc.) A large amount of research is consistent with the idea that remembering is reconstructive. 2003). While experiments used some sentences that were assertions participants would have heard and hence could remember directly, for example Birds can fly, many sentences were novel and required simple inferences to make implied knowledge explicit, for example No typhoons are wheat or All snails can breathe (Meyer 1970; Smith, Shoben, & Rips, 1974). They have to repeat the word or phrase to the person next to them, and so on. This leads me to expand on Fernndezs brief caveat. Memories that provide an epistemic benefit are likely to be accurate when appropriately produced (Fernndez, 2015: 537). Gusnard D.A, Akbudak E, Shulman G.L, Raichle M.E. 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. While there has been a great deal of research concerning prospective memoryremembering to do things in the future (e.g. Brandimonte et al. The hypothesis that remembering should be viewed as reconstructive dates to an important book by Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932). The results from these studies have provided converging evidence of the beneficial influences of prior knowledge on reconstructive memory. Budson et al. A sensory signature that distinguishes true from false memories. We unlock the potential of millions of people worldwide. 2000). 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. 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. More specifically, adopting an observer perspective to remember a traumatic event is likely to be beneficial. of the rememberer. Johnson M.K, Foley M.A, Suengas A.G, Raye C.L. 2000, 2001, 2003). Practical aspects of memory: current research and issues. In: Prigatano G.P, Schacter D.L, editors. According to Fernndez, observer perspectives are distorted memories that can nonetheless bestow an adaptive benefit in the case of remembering a traumatic event. Klein and Loftus developed a 10-item questionnaire in which they probed past and future events that were matched for temporal distance from the present (e.g. All three social categories were first presented in a neutral, non-partisan context (the left-most condition with each panel). Squire L.R, Stark C.E, Clark R.E. WebThis running autobiographical record is a constructive and reconstructive long-term memory that is unique to the individual. Race, sex, and age were each crossed with these cues of party support in each of these two conditions. The construction phase was associated with some common pastfuture activity in posterior visual regions and left hippocampus, which may reflect the initial interaction between visually presented cues and hippocampally mediated pointers to memory traces (Moscovitch 1992). information contained in memory traces and knowledge, expectations, and beliefs. The frontal lobes. WebThe reconstructive memory model of episodic future thinking in anxiety (Miloyan, Pachana et al., 2014) suggests that the biased retrieval of information from memory in Constructive memory and memory distortions: a parallel-distributed processing approach. 's study, or lack thereof, may have influenced the pattern of results. Graham K.S, Lee A.C, Brett M, Patterson K. The neural basis of autobiographical and semantic memory: new evidence from three PET studies. Memory Constructive Activity in Conscious Cognition Perceptual Construction Builds 1995) and parahippocampal/retrosplenial cortices (e.g. Raven Press; New York, NY: 1989. Dorrit Billman, in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 1996. PracticalPsychology. If this idea has merit, then there should be considerable overlap in the psychological and neural processes involved in remembering the past and imagining the future. Johnson M.K. Moulin C.J.A, Conway M.A, Thompson R.G, James N, Jones R.W. Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences. If the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis has merit, then remembering the past and imagining the future should show a number of similar characteristics and depend on some of the same neural substrates. Stuss D.T, Benson D.F. In this lesson, we'll discuss the constructive nature of memory and how the way we process information impacts decision making. Have you ever played a game of Telephone? All of the participants sit in a line. Certainly, things would get twisted, right? Indeed, several researchers have argued that the memory errors involving forgetting or distortion serve an adaptive role (cf. 14). 1999; Schnider 2003; Moulin et al. Phenomena from reconstructive memory to encoding specificity can be seen as effects of established concepts on the encoding or retrieval of new material. For example, in postevent misinformation studies, participants view a video event, then hear a narrative about it that contains incorrect information about details in the film (e.g., the getaway car was blue rather than green). We have reviewed the traditional cognitive and emotional accounts of confabulation, suggesting that a better understanding of the processes underlying confabulation can be reached by considering the interaction between cognitive and emotional factors. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, UK: 1932. 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. If we have an especially vivid script of the events we believe happened, we may be more likely to omit details that dont seem highly related, and we may unwittingly alter others in a way that better fits with the script. This historical context provides a backdrop for This perspective allows us to better understand confabulation as an exaggerated instance of a class of biased belief which is widely present thus locating confabulation in the greater family of false belief disorders. Fig. 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. 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). 2001b). The idea of schema is still used in psychology and cognitive therapy today. al. Not all false memories are created equal: the neural basis of false recognition. Modeling hippocampal and neocortical contributions to recognition memory: a complementary learning systems approach. Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred. Thus, additional regions supporting these processes are recruited by the future event task. This overlap was most apparent during the elaboration phase, when participants are focused on generating details about the remembered or imagined event (figures 3 and and4).4). One possibility, then, is that extensive foresight evolved first in the context of cooperative defence from savannah predators. Furthermore, we confirmed that past and future events were of equivalent phenomenology with both objective and subjective measures, thus enabling the interpretation of pastfuture differences as reflecting differences in temporal orientation and engagement of task-specific processes. But to what extent do the activations associated with simulating future events specifically reflect the requirement to imagine a future event, as opposed to general imaginings that are not linked to a particular time frame? Accordingly, the threats posed by other humans in early social groups potentially shaped and fine-tuned the evolution of complex cognitive capacities to enable the mapping of the social world and subsequent prediction of conspecific action (Nesse, 2009; Sznycer et al., 2016; Trower & Gilbert, 1989). Participants in the first experiment produced shorter and shorter reports as they were repeatedly asked to recall the story. AD, Alzheimer's disease. Verfaellie M, Page K, Orlando F, Schacter D.L. Bartlett's (1932) ideas have influenced countless modern attempts to conceive of memory as a constructive rather than a reproductive process. He conducted experiments. This tale included details about ghosts after all, it is called The War of The Ghosts. Suffice it to say that plausibility should not be mistaken as proof. Recollection: This type of memory retrieval involves reconstructing memory, often utilizing logical structures, partial memories, narratives or clues. They did so by having patients and controls study lists of semantic associates (e.g. 2007). (You can learn more about flashbulb memories here!). Phenomena from reconstructive memory to encoding specificity can be seen as effects of established concepts on the encoding or retrieval of new material. 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. In contrast, I suggest below (Section 5) that observer perspectives can be epistemically beneficial. Semantic versus phonological false recognition in aging and Alzheimer's disease. In all probability, the effects of expert testimony are complex and qualified by other factors (e.g., Leippe et al., 2004). Schacter D.L, Cendan D.L, Dodson C.S, Clifford E.R. A conjunction analysis of the fMRI data that assessed common neural activity during true recognition (i.e. False recognition in young and older adults: exploring the characteristics of illusory memories. The likelihood of reliably recalling experienced events would then depend upon the completeness of the script and the degree to which the details stick together (or are recalled at all). The site is secure. Miller & Wolford 1999; Slotnick & Dodson 2005; but see, Wixted & Stretch 2000). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Reconstructive memory is the process in which we recall our memory of an event or a story. The cost of this flexibility and constructive processing is reduced accuracy. 2004), Verfaellie et al. 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). In: Stuss D.T, Knight R.T, editors. Evaluating characteristics of false memories: remember/know judgments and memory characteristics questionnaire compared. The repeated internal generation of threat-related thoughts may also exacerbate an anxious affective state by increasing the subjective plausibility of those events (Brown et al., 2016; Raune, Macleod, & Holmes, 2005; Wu et al., 2015), further biasing the retrieval of threat-related content from semantic and episodic memory. Saxe R, Kanwisher N. People thinking about thinking people. Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events. However, future events are rarely, if ever, exact replicas of past events. Constructive memory is a psychological concept that analyses how the brain creates memories. Some participants even added a moral to the end of a story, as if it were a fairy tale. McDermott K.B. For example, writing an answer on an essay exam often involves remembering bits of information and then restructuring the remaining information based on these partial memories. 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. For example, the disparate features that constitute an episode must be linked or bound together at encoding; failure to adequately bind together appropriate features can result in the common phenomenon of source memory failure, where people retrieve fragments of an episode but do not recollect, or misrecollect, how or when the fragments were acquired, resulting in various kinds of memory illusions and distortions (e.g. WebReconstruction From Memory in Naturalistic Environments Reconstructive Memory Resistance to Social Influence Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny Romanian Orphan Studies Schema Theory Semantic Knowledge in Patient HM Short-Term Memory Situational Influence Social Identity Theory Social Impact Theory I feel like its a lifeline. In the first experiment, Bartlett read the story to participants, sometimes twice. Since amnesic patients can show intact priming effects on various implicit or indirect memory tasks (for review, see Schacter et al. Notably, in all regions exhibiting significant pastfuture differences, future events were associated with more activity than past events, as also observed by Szpunar et al. Furthermore, participants were more likely to adopt a field than observer perspective for temporally close than temporally distant events in both the past and the future. 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). 8600 Rockville Pike Concepts Not passive but 'constructive', previous Thinking about the future plays a critical role in mental life (Gilbert 2006), and students of brain function have long recognized the important role of frontal cortex in allowing individuals to anticipate or plan for the future (e.g. Such patients also sometimes show pathological levels of false recognition, claiming incorrectly that novel information is familiar (e.g. He was also interested in what the participants recalled. Such interest has been driven mainly by observations concerning the memory distortion known as confabulation, in which patients with damage to various regions within prefrontal cortex and related regions produce vivid but highly inaccurate recollections of events that never happened (e.g. The role of the temporo-parietal junction in theory of mind.

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