Abstract
This chapter describes the genesis and historical development of the psychology of autobiographical memory. First of all, the author presents the pioneering contributions made by Francis Galton, Victor and Catherine Henri, and Sigmund Freud before examining the contributions made by the main psychology schools which succeeded one another in the period from 1879—generally considered to be scientific psychology’s date of birth—to the first half of the 1970s. The rest of the chapter focuses on the contribution to the psychology of autobiographical memory made by one of Cognitivism’s primary exponents—i.e. Ulric Neisser—and the main theoretical models and research areas characterising the debate on autobiographical memory in the contemporary era.
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Notes
- 1.
The term eugenics (from the Greek eugenes, literally “well-born” and thus being born with good qualities) was coined by Galton himself. For Galton, eugenics was to have been a branch of science free from any sort of political or cultural conditioning and entirely focused on the objective of improving the human condition as far as possible. In an article published in the journal Nature (1904), Galton threw light on his perspective on eugenics in this way: “Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve and develop the inborn qualities of a race. But what is meant by improvement? We must leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion on account of the most almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. The essentials of eugenics may, however, be easily defined. All would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be” (p. 82). Unfortunately, with the advent of Nazism and other twentieth-century totalitarian ideologies, Galton’s progressive messages were tragically distorted and eugenics was used to justify some of humanity’s worst crimes.
- 2.
In Galton’s writings, the expressions “mental association” and “idea” are used interchangeably.
- 3.
With this expression, Galton meant mental images of a visual type only.
- 4.
It is important to underline that, in contrast to the cue word technique experiment, this investigation focused exclusively on memories we might call “recent”. The study participants were, in fact, invited to think of their breakfast that same day and thus they were asked to recall a mundane personal episode that occurred just a few hours before they filled in the questionnaire.
- 5.
In this respect, it should be remembered that Galton always argued forcefully for the need for psychology to equip itself with methodologies designed to generate quantitative descriptions of mental phenomena. Psychometry is the word which Galton (1879b) coined to describe this theoretical and methodological orientation, which he defined as “the art of imposing measurement and number upon operations of the mind” (p. 149).
- 6.
- 7.
Freud is explicit regarding his doubts on the use of surveys as a childhood memory enquiry method in chapter four of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (see Freud, 1901/1960, p. 46). It is worth remembering that the Henris themselves were well aware of the limitations inherent to the survey method. In the conclusion to their article, they note: “One must not expect to obtain a complete solution to a question in a survey—rather, it makes it possible to indicate the areas that must be studied. A survey always remains superficial, it does not say why [emphasis added] things are the way they are” (Nicolas et al., 2013, p. 374).
- 8.
In contemporary literature, these two very different forms of memory experiences are referred to as first-person memories and third-person memories, respectively (see Cohen & Gunz, 2002; Rice & Rubin, 2009). Other expressions used with a certain frequency to describe these same experiences are field memories and observer memories (Nigro & Neisser, 1983; Robinson & Swanson, 1993).
- 9.
It was Titchener who first coined the expression structural psychology in an article published in 1898 in the Philosophical Review journal. For more on the relationship between Titchener’s approach and that of Wundt, see Schultz and Schultz (2011).
- 10.
Careful readers will not have missed the similarity between this example and the observations made by the Henris in the context of their childhood memory survey (see Nicolas et al., 2013, p. 369; see Sect. 2.1.2 of the current volume). While Wundt makes no reference to these observations (apparently unsurprising, as the Henris’ article came out in 1897, a year later, that is, than Grundriss der Psychologie), it is extremely likely that he had had access to at least part of the data supplied by the French couple. My reason for formulating this hypothesis relates to a detail in Victor Henri’s scientific biography which I have not mentioned but will comment on here. From October 1894 to March 1896, Victor Henri spent a period of study at the Leipzig Experimental Psychology Laboratory, working under Wundt’s direct supervision. As Serge Nicolas has noted (1994; see also Nicolas et al., 2013), it was during this period that Victor Henri decided to undertake his survey on early childhood memories with his wife. Further proof of this lies in the fact that the questionnaire used for this research was published in the early months of 1895 in a grand total of three journals (L’Annéé Psychologique, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, Psychological Review) and that in each of these the list of questions was followed by an invitation to readers—formulated by Henri himself—to send in answers by post, directly to Leipzig, where he then lived (see Henri, 1895a, 1895b, 1895c). Returning to the relationship between the Henris and Wundt, we thus have a valid reason to believe that Wundt could not have been unaware of the results, however preliminary, of research which was conceived and carried out precisely by one of the young scholars who regularly attended his laboratory.
- 11.
The most important research carried out in this period includes the following: Sperling’s (1960) experiments on iconic memory; Brown and McNeill’s (1966) study on the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon; Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) theoretical model dividing up the memory into three subsystems (sensory register, short-term store, long-term store); research into semantic networks by Collins and Quillian (1969); and, lastly, Baddeley and Warrington’s (1970) study into the distinction between short- and long-term memory in amnesia patients.
- 12.
The essay was part of an essay collection edited by Tulving himself together with his colleague Wayne Donaldson, entitled Organization of Memory (Tulving & Donaldson, 1972).
- 13.
- 14.
In an autobiographical essay published five years before his death, Neisser (2007) felt the need to clarify that in historical terms according to him the status of founder of the cognitive movement was incorrect: “I was not really the father of cognitive psychology, only the godfather who gave it a name. The name itself was not even very original, given that the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies was already functioning” (p. 297).
- 15.
Neisser’s presentation—Memory: What Are the Important Questions?—was first published in the volume Practical Aspects of Memory (Gruneberg et al., 1978) which comprised the Cardiff conference proceedings. A few years later, this same text was reprinted in a volume edited by Neisser (1982)—Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts—a collection of research articles and theoretical essays written by the scholars who had contributed significantly to the emergence and affirmation of the ecological approach to the study of memory.
- 16.
This specific memory contents category is frequently called personal semantic memories (see Kopelman et al., 1989).
- 17.
This system’s task is to transfer autobiographical information from the short-term to the long-term memory (Rubin, 2012, p. 14).
- 18.
The functions of this system, entirely similar to those performed by the working memory system, comprise identifying and temporarily retaining information making up episodic autobiographical memories (Rubin, 2006, p. 284).
- 19.
Very recently, Rubin (2019) has proposed combining the basic systems model with a broad theoretical approach applying to memory in general which he called the dimensional model. This new integrated theory’s main contribution consists in finding a clear location for autobiographical memory within the wide realm of memory phenomena. Indeed, Rubin holds that three fundamental properties distinguish autobiographical memory from other kinds of memory: (1) it is a self-referential mental activity, (2) it involves an ability to mentally construct scenes (which, in turn, enables a sense of reliving), and (3) it is an explicit form of remembering.
- 20.
For more on Conway’s hypotheses on the specific cognitive structures which form the autobiographical memory knowledge base, see Sect. 3.1 of Chapter 3.
- 21.
Most recent research indicates that this ability emerges at 2–3 years of age (see Fivush et al., 2011).
- 22.
Those taking part can express judgements of a quantitative type on the phenomenological features of their recollections: for example, pressing a button to answer questions such as “On a scale from 0 to 10 how vivid is your recollection?”
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Sotgiu, I. (2021). A “Brief” History of the Psychology of Autobiographical Memory. In: The Psychology of Autobiographical Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69571-2_2
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