Pillemer and I have made up. I'm totally into his stuff this week.
I think the his writing on the narrative memory system and linguistic development are incredibly important in terms of the development of the self and autobiographical memory. However, Pillemer's dualistic view seems a little too simple. While we are dividing and itemizing memory systems, I am more apt to side with Roediger and say that there are probably more like 20 to 25 different interactive memory systems working together at any given time. I at least wish Pillemer had accounted for other types of sensory memory (auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory) more thoroughly. Perhaps his idea of imagistic traces covers all sensory perception. Drawing the lines between the systems quickly becomes sticky, but nonetheless his distinction between encoding experiences prelinguistically and after linguistic/narrative skills have been acquired is very significant. In the context of verbal recall (which, as Bauer points out, is what most of this research is preoccupied with), linguistic mastery during both encoding and recall seems to be of the utmost importance. Early childhood memories are not filtered through a linguistic narrative lens and are “discordant with adults' purposeful recollective efforts.” Perhaps this is the same reason we often have a difficult time verbally recalling dreams. As most dreams do not unfold in a logical narrative manner, the dreamer, similar to the prelinguistic child, has a hard time recalling the jumbled, fluidly encoded images. Charlotte Doyle of SLC's psychology department places a great deal of importance on linguistically representing one's thoughts, justifying her requirement that all students post on the blog prior to every class by saying, “You haven't thought it until you've put it into words.” Nelson and Fivush have a lot to say about language's importance in development of the concept of self and memory. For instance, language gives the idea of the abstract construct of time and helps to organize memories into the narrative forms of autobiographic memory. More importantly perhaps, it allows children to interact with other people, strengthening their sense of self and their socially constructed notions of what and how one should remember.
This social/cultural theory is equally as important and inextricably linked to the Pillemer's narrative model. Harley and Reese say “The primary purpose of autobiographical memory is to share personal memories with others,” so of course we are talking about something that is largely social. At first, I was a little put off by how much sense this deterministic social/cultural model made. If I am simply a product of my social upbringing, and the way I represent all my memories and my concept of self are socially determined before I even have a concept of self, what hope do I have of achieving any sort of originality in my predetermined life? But I found the fact that children's unique styles of interaction with parents during memory talk influences how parents go about this talk to be existentially empowering. Then I felt unsettled again when, after reading that parents' memory talk styles have an definite impact on children's memories and personalities, I started to think about the effect of our teach-for-the-test educational system.
It is fairly obvious that events experienced prior to attaining a concrete sense of self would not be momentous. If something is not happening to what you perceive as you, you will be less likely to remember it—as Pillemer beats to death in the section of his second chapter that I didn't like. Without a concept of self, one is no better off than a third-party recipient of information (such as the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima) or than the amnesiacs we've talked about being told of their own past as if it were secondhand knowledge. If one does not believe something to be important to their lives, it is not necessary to be encoded in long term memory. This sort of evolutionary view (where one remembers that which is critical to his survival, forgetting that which is not—as mentioned in the section of Pillemer's second chapter that I did like) carries over beyond childhood amnesia to, I think, any period or part of your life that you don't recall very well. If the events of this period are not vital to your current goals or emotional state, why would you remember them? In this light (and after reading the accounts of decent to impressive infantile memory), I side with Howe and Courage in that infantile amnesia is largely a chimera, a popular figment perpetuated by the relatively recent spike in childhood amnesia research.
One last note: What do you guys think about Howe and Courage's section about infants' memory traces being reactivated so much that instead of crystalizing the trace as a permanent memory, the repeated remembering actually (as I've posted before) exponentially perverts the memory to the point of furthering infantile amnesia?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I was relieved to see that the Howe Courage article addressed the issue of repeated tracing leading to increased infantile amnesia because I had gone through a similar 'thought' when I first started reading about the ideas behind infantile amnesia. I think that it is not surprising to anyone that through frequent recall the memory can remain intact- and furthermore, what actually remains intact is a vague impression of the original memory of the event rather than the actual event itself. The recall method has such an impact on the memory that what is actually remembered is not the original memory, but what remains of the memory after a specific cue is used in recall. The remaining imprint is contingent on the cue that is used for the initial (and subsequent) recalls.
The article states this and then draws the conclusion that rather than permitting better long-term memory, this process leads to higher infantile amnesia levels. But I think that it is important to realize that we go through this process each time we remember something. Every time we go about recalling an event from our past, especially an event we only vaguely remember, we are making our memories of that event more and more specific and thus less and less of an accurate representation of the actual initial event we are attempting to remember. What we could have initially remembered about an event is lost after several times of Not remembering it when we recall the event. It seems almost as if this idea of an increased likelihood of infantile amnesia through reactivation of specific traces is just an exaggerated version of what we encounter in our memory everyday.
Post a Comment