Search Results

This chapter reviews the literature on the development of event memory and the brain system that underlies it. It describes what is known about the explicit memory system and its development, as well as areas in which more could be understood about the development of the system. It reviews the literature on effects of stress on the development of the explicit memory system, and proposes ways in which timing and plasticity could play a role in long-term effects of stress on the brain basis of memory.

There are a number of approaches to neuroimaging episodic memory. In many studies, subjects are scanned as they learn and/or remember stimuli such as words or word-pairs. Using paradigms such as this one continues to learn much about, for example, frontal lobe contributions to memory operations. This chapter focuses on the retrieval of autobiographical event memories, those personally relevant episodes with a specific spatio-temporal context, the storehouse of our life's experiences ranging from the recent to the very remote. Although neuroimaging embraces techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and event related potentials (ERPs), only positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are considered in this instance, and the relevant literature briefly reviewed.

This chapter explains a model of autobiographical memory based on the dimensions of self-reference, the construction of scenes needed to create memories of events, explicit versus implicit memory, emotional intensity, uncertainty, and other processes of memory. The model is an extension of the basic systems model and event memory, which when combined resolve many inconsistencies in the current literature, integrate the behavioral and neural level of analysis more efficiently, and identify new research questions. In doing so, it places autobiographical memory into a well-specified organization with other types of memory and psychological topics and thus into a broader context not attempted in earlier models of autobiographical memory. These topics include episodic memory, memory for fiction and film, other people’s memories, personality, habits, phobias, and déjà vu. The behavioral and neural evidence used to define, support, and evaluate the model locates autobiographical memory in a knowledge-rich, more easily applied memory organization.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of how conversations children have with their parents about events—both as they unfold and after they have occurred—can affect children’s memory for personal experiences. We begin with a discussion of the ways parents reminisce with their children about past experiences and the implications of individual differences in reminiscing styles for children’s developing event and autobiographical memory skills. Then we turn to consider how parent–child conversations as events unfold can influence understanding, encoding, and subsequent remembering. We conclude by drawing attention to potential multiplicative effects of different types of event talk for children’s learning and remembering, and how parent–child conversations during and after events may support children’s deliberate memory skills.