The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system.

2000/01/01 by Martin A. Conway, Christopher W. Pleydell-Pearce · 11 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Autobiographical memory #Childhood memory #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Cognitive science #Computer science #Educational and Psychological Assessments #Episodic memory #Identity, Memory, and Therapy #Knowledge base #Memory Processes and Influences #Personality #Psychology #Recall #Reciprocal #Reconstructive memory #Relation (database) #Social psychology #World Wide Web

paper · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.107.2.261

openalex publication_date 2000/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The authors describe a model of autobiographical memory in which memories are transitory mental constructions within a self-memory system (SMS). The SMS contains an autobiographical knowledge base and current goals of the working self. Within the SMS, control processes modulate access to the knowledge base by successively shaping cues used to activate autobiographical memory knowledge structures and, in this way, form specific memories. The relation of the knowledge base to active goals is reciprocal, and the knowledge base "grounds" the goals of the working self. It is shown how this model can be used to draw together a wide range of diverse data from cognitive, social, developmental, personality, clinical, and neuropsychological autobiographical memory research.

Citations

• Childhood and Society
• Priming of semantic autobiographical knowledge: A case study of retrograde amnesia
• A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder.
• Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions
• Remindings and their effects in learning a cognitive skill
• Preserved Learning and Retention of Pattern-Analyzing Skill in Amnesia: Dissociation of Knowing How and Knowing That
• Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best
• Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect.
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• Olfactory Cuing of Autobiographical Memory
• Attention to Action
• Confabulation and the Control of Recollection
• Strategic retrieval and the frontal lobes: Evidence from confabulation and amnesia
• Visual object agnosia, prosopagnosia, achromatopsia, loss of visual imagery, and autobiographical amnesia following recovery from cortical blindness: Case M.H.
• Confabulation: Knowledge and recollective experience
• The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history.
• Self-schemata and processing information about the self.

Cited by

• Episodic and semantic knowledge in emotional self-report: Evidence for two judgment processes.
• Mechanisms of spontaneous confabulations: a strategic retrieval account
• Models of confabulation: A critical review and a new framework
• "It was never that bad": Biased recall of grief and long-term adjustment to the death of a spouse
• Emotion and Memory Research: A Grumpy Overview
• Involuntary memories and involuntary future thinking differently tax cognitive resources
• Autobiographical Odor Memory
• Activity River
• Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence
• Dissociation Following Traumatic Stress
• Long-term memory [wikipedia]