APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 4,499-506 (1990)

Book Reviews

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY, David C. Rubin (Ed.), Cambridge University Press, 1988. No. of pages: ix + 298. ISBN 0 52136 850 2 (paperback). Price L12.95.

The publication of a paperback edition of this book two years after its original appearance in hardback is to be greatly welcomed. The book deserves to reach a wider audience. The chapters included provide fairly comprehensive coverage of the field, which is still at an early stage of its development. Most of the interesting theoretical issues raised in this volume are still unresolved, although they are the focus of a great deal of current research. Many of them are outlined in Rubin’s excellent opening chapter, which provides an overview of the topic and a framework for the rest of the book. His chapter deals, albeit briefly, with such issues as the value of phenomenological reports as data and verifiability of autobiographical reports. He also considers the varied theoretical perspectives which are brought to bear on this most eclectic of topics. His preview of the book highlights the areas of agreement and disagreement between the other contributors.

The second part of the book consists of three chapters dealing with historical, theoretical, and methodological contexts for the study of autobiographical memory. Robinson provides an interesting account of the history of research in this area, pointing out that both Freud and Galton studied personal recollections, each from very different perspectives. Brewer con- siders how the study of autobiographical memory relates to the study of memory in general, and in so doing develops a taxonomy which emphasizes that autobiographical memory is memory for information related to the seq, a concept typically avoided where possible by cognitive psychologists. Like Brewer, Linton discusses some of the different methods available to study autobiographical memory and discusses aspects of he own classic long-term investi- gation. The small overlap between the methodologies discussed by Brewer and those by Linton is testimony to the diversity of approaches available within this field.

The third part of the volume considers the general organization of autobiographical memory. Neisser considers how the nested structure of events in the world is reflected in the nested structure of autobiographical memory. Barclay argues strongly that most autobiographical memories are reconstructions of the past based upon consistent self-schemata. One implication of this is that people ought to have memories for events which appear to them to be accurate but which in fact are not. Barclay presents data which, he claims, demonstrate that this is the case and that, furthermore, this tendency increases as events become more remote in time. Barclay seems at times, however, to be confusing autobiographical memories for events with verbal descriptions of those events as recorded in diaries for the purpose of his study. Subjects were required to affirm as their own memories only items that were exact replicas of original diary records. This would appear to be a test of episodic memory, where subjects would do better to recall the actual wording of the original record rather than the event itself. It is not surprising that subjects often accepted foils as descriptions of their own memories when some of the foils were compatible with the original event. Other foils were taken from the diary of a person not participating in the study, and could often have been ruled out on stylistic grounds alone. Despite doubts about Barclay’s methodology, his theoretical position appears very plausible. This section concludes with an interesting dis- cussion of the strategies used by subjects asked to recall a specific memory (e.g. going to a birthday party) as revealed by analysis of verbal protocols (Reiser, Black, and Kalamarides) and a review of developmental data relating to autobiographical memory (Fitzgerald).

The fourth section considers the temporal organization of autobiographical memory. Brown, Shevell, and Rips focus on the link between public events, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and personal memories. They present data on the strategies used by subjects

0 1990 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

500 Book Reviews

in attempting to date such occurrences, and show convincingly that the knowledge one stores about them often includes personal context (e.g. how and when one heard about an event) in addition to knowledge about the event itself and its relationship to other events, Robinson presents evidence that the structure of the school year provides a natural and influential temporal reference system for students in a variety of tasks from dating events to providing mnemonic organization in paired-associate learning.

The next section presents two chapters dealing with the actual temporal distribution of autobiographical memories. Wetzler and Sweeney demonstrate that, as long suspected, fewer memories appear to be available from the first few years of life than would be expected on the basis of normal retention and forgetting processes. Rubin, Wetzler, and Nebes re-analyse data from previous studies to demonstrate that a ‘reminiscence effect’ occurs in subjects older than about 35. Older adults show a marked tendency to recall a disproportionate number of memories from their childhood and youth.

The final section deals with failures of autobiographical memory in amnesia. Baddeley and Wilson present a tentative taxonomy of such failures based upon a consideration of ten amnesics and two non-amnesic controls. This is followed by a more detailed consideration of autobiographical memory failure in four frontal lobe amnesics, including two exhibiting confabulation. Butters and Cermak, following a review of recent studies of retrograde amnesia, present some fascinating data from the unique case of a distinguished and prolific scientist who developed Korsakoffs syndrome two years after writing an extensive autobiography. Along with his numerous books and hundreds of papers, this provided a huge corpus of information which must at one time have been stored in the patient’s autobiographical memory. This was used to demonstrate conclusively that his severe retrograde amnesia developed acutely with the onset of his amnesic disorder. In the final chapter Crovitz provides an annotated transcript of two sessions with a head-injured patient in which autobiographical memories for events which occurred prior to his accident were retrieved by the presentation of cue words.

Overall, this is an interesting and stimulating collection. Rubin’s introductory chapter pro- vides a necessary framework for the newcomer to the field. The contributors approach the subject from a variety of directions and the editor’s guidance is therefore most welcome. The volume raises more questions than it answers, but the questions raised are of sufficient interest to guarantee that research into these issues will continue for some considerable time. Perhaps the most important question is whether or not autobiographical memory is qualita- tively different from non-autobiographical memory. The answer to this question will require careful theoretical analysis and experimentation. It goes without saying that different memory systems should only be postulated when the data allow no other interpretation. The existence of different systems is sometimes postulated without adequate reason. For example, Brewer points out that when subjects are instructed to produce a specific personal memory in response to a cue word, the reported memories tend to give a negatively accelerated decreasing retention function. He contrasts this with the fact that subjects instructed to respond with the first word which comes to mind in response to a cue word (i.e. a standard word-association task) tend to produce high-frequency words which are likely to have been acquired at an early age. He interprets the fact that the two tasks produce opposite distributions of responses in terms of age of acquisition as indicating that different memory processes must be at work. However, the simple fact is that high-frequency words, in addition to being acquired earlier, are also likely to have been encountered more recently than low-frequency words in accordance with the laws of probability. In each case, then, more recently encountered stimuli, be they events or words, are more likely to be recalled and different memory systems are not required to explain these results.

CHRIS FRENCH Goldsmiths College