autobiographical remembering and self-composing

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Cambridge] On: 09 December 2014, At: 02:47 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcy19 Autobiographical remembering and self-composing Craig R. Barclay a & Thomas S. Smith a a University of Rochester , Rochester, NY Published online: 24 Dec 2007. To cite this article: Craig R. Barclay & Thomas S. Smith (1993) Autobiographical remembering and self-composing, International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 6:3, 231-251, DOI: 10.1080/08936039308405620 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08936039308405620 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

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Page 1: Autobiographical remembering and self-composing

This article was downloaded by: [University of Cambridge]On: 09 December 2014, At: 02:47Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

International Journal ofPersonal Construct PsychologyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcy19

Autobiographical rememberingand self-composingCraig R. Barclay a & Thomas S. Smith aa University of Rochester , Rochester, NYPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Craig R. Barclay & Thomas S. Smith (1993) Autobiographicalremembering and self-composing, International Journal of Personal ConstructPsychology, 6:3, 231-251, DOI: 10.1080/08936039308405620

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08936039308405620

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

Page 2: Autobiographical remembering and self-composing

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMEMBER1 NC AND SELF-COMPOSI NC

CRAIG R. BARCLAY A N D T H O M A S S. SMITH

University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

A interpretive synopsis based on our empirical research and theoretical perspectives on autobiographical remembering and self-composing is presented. Conceptual links are made among Kelly’s notions of persminl constructs, autobiographical remembering, and self. The influences of attitudes on remembering persoilnlly significant infirmation, either by oneself or with others, are emphasized. The possiblefuncfions ofautobiograph- i d remembering are explored through an ecological perspective. Tun functions are identified: a coherence or unity function and an interpersonal function. A sense of coherence is achieved in (rekonstructive or productive remembering; intimacies are established and maintained in productive interactions. It is proposed that a sense of self can be instantaneously experienced direct/y through an improvisational process of self- composition in autobiographical remembering and interacting.

Everyday autobiographical remembering can be conceptualized as a (re)constructive cognitive activity through which feelings, emotions, or attitudes are justified (Bartlett, 1932). What a person remembers depends as much on the present purpose for remembering (which drives constructive activities) as on what actually occurred in the past. This process results in a culturally bound personal history inferentially reconstructed from memory fragments. From this perspective, re- membering can be understood as both an adaptive activity with origins in social interactions (Edwards & Middleton, 1988; Middleton & Ed- wards, 1990; Neisser, 1988a; Nelson, 1990) and an activity constrained by the intrapsychic need for integrity and the interpersonal need to establish emotional ties to others (Barclay & Hodges, 1990). Autobio- graphical recollections are therefore formed and reformed, interpreted and reinterpreted, such that a contemporary personal history is both internally consistent and externally validated by social consensus. Thus, a person cannot fabricate just any memories or personal history. The contents of memories depend on actual experiences (perceptually based memories) and how those experiences are interpreted (concep- tually based memories) to reflect narrative truthfulness, as well as on

Address correspondence to Craig R. Barclay, University of Rochester, Rochester, N Y 14627.

InterfldtIOndl lourndl Of Persona/ Con5trucf Psychology, 6:131-257, 1993 231 Cupyright 0 1993 Taylor 6 Francis

0893-603x193 $10.00 + .OO

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social agreement and validation that autobiographical recollections are true to life and, under certain conditions, veridical in detail.

Our claim is that the self is composed in autobiographical mem- ories when they are used for an adaptive purpose (or function). Barclay and Hodges (1989) have argued tltat self-composition is an improvis- ational, emergent process through which personal meanings, or “life- themes” (Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie, 1979), take form as autobio- graphical memories. These compositions establish in narrative terms individuals’ subjective interpretation of their personal history over time.

Many forms (or structures) of self-composition may be created by the use of contemporary metaphors (e.g., “life is like a story”), which serve as one source of conceptually derived autobiographical memo- ries. These metaphors could even take various narrative forms at dif- ferent periods during the life course (Cohler, 1991; Freeman, 1984; Gergen & Gergen, 1988; Handel, 1987), evidenced by shifts in inter- pretations of the past or the restructuring of personal histories.’ As in other improvisational acts, metaphors serve as weak heuristics (Robin- son & Hawpe, 1986); they are modified in the context of joint and collective remembering, with affective and emotional fluctuations, and as revised or new interpretations of the past are explored through reflective cognitive processes. Furthermore, it is presumed that met- aphors are understood and shared by most members of a social group or culture at any particular historical time, even though specific met- aphorical uses (e.g., life as melodrama or romantic saga) may not be stated explicitly.

In sum, it is assumed that the structure of autobiographical mem- ories is shaped largely by the contents of thoughts-which are speci- fied by sociohistorical factors and cultural practices-together with universal mental processes like constructive and reconstructive re- membering, generalization, schematization, and logical as well as pragmatic inferencing. Most generally, autobiographical recollections are the products of narrative and paradigmatic modes of thinking (Bruner, 1985) that are embedded in social contexts. Accordingly, we propose that, together with the activities of remembering, self-com- positions impart meaning to particular autobiographical memories and the formation of personal histories and particular life stories.

‘Hypotheses regarding the psychological reality of narrative forms are becoming increasingly popular descriptions of the self together with cognitive heuristics (paradig- matic and narrative modes) as ways of thinking, knowing, and understanding. Caution in interpreting narrative forms as the structure of the self, in particular, is warranted to guard against the reification of metaphor.

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Autobiographical Remembering 233

In this article, we illustrate in broad strokes the relationship be- tween autobiographical remembering and a sense of self. In doing so, we reveal theoretical connections between contemporary research on autobiographical memory and Kelly’s (1955) notion of personal con- structs, especially in terms of (re)constructive memory processes and the ways in which autobiographical memories can be used. Much of the research cited is driven by an assumption similar to Kelly’s (1955) fundamental postulate: “A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events” (p. 46). An- ticipation implies cognition. The roots of cognition are in primary (e.g., perceptual) and higher order intellectual activities associated with tool and sign use and the development of a semiotic system (Leontyev, 1931/1981; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986) as well as in feelings, atti- tudes, and self-schemata (Bartlett, 1932; Markus, 1977).

We present our synopsis in three sections. First, we outline an ecological perspective (E. J. Gibson, 1984; J . J. Gibson, 1979; Neisser, 1989) on autobiographical memories, highlighting their uses and in- terpersonal origins. Selected empirical findings regarding (a) accura- cies and inaccuracies in autobiographical memories and (b) beliefs in memory accuracy are then reviewed. The intrapsychic functions of autobiographical memory are the focus of the review; in particular the use of personal recollections to maintain a sense of unity within a causal-explanatory framework or self-theory (Epstein, 1973). This re- view demonstrates the necessity for renewing a metatheoretical treat- ment of the self, offering a reconceptualization of the self in terms of purposeful remembering activities (see also Mancuso & Ceely, 1980). In the concluding section, we address the issues of instantiated and constructed self-knowledge and instant self-composition in autobio- graphical memories as a form of improvisation.

A N ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES

Theories are about the world. They are simultaneously induced and deduced from experience and reflection. Ecological theories of mem- ory and remembering processes are shaped through induction from observations of how personal memories are used (e.g., Halbwachs, 1950); descriptions of the contents of memory (e.g., Brewer, 1986; Lin- ton, 1986); and, at times, laboratory experimentation (e.g., Barclay & Wellman, 1986) and experiments in nature (Brofenbrenner, 1979; Bruce, 1985; Gibbs, 1979; Neisser, 1978, 1982). A theory based on an analysis of use is different from one specifying, at the outset, hypo-

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thetical constructs regarding the nature of autobiographical memory structures and representational forms or the mechanisms or processes of knowledge acquisition, or storage and retrieval.

Contemporary information-processing, artificial intelligence, and connectionist models provide useful, but limited, perspectives on au- tobiographical memory. Such models tend not to behave like human cognitive activity in a number of ways (Tienson, 1987). For instance, it has not been possible thus far to find the rules that mediate the explosion of information needed to carry out even simple visuomotor activities like walking through a chaotic environment (”framing prob- lems”) or to specify how different commonsense knowledge domains can be brought together to meet the demands of any cognitive task (“folding problems”). In addition, most cognitive models of the kind mentioned above do not address, and are not designed to address, relationships between cognition and emotion (cf. Lazarus, 1982; Za- jonc, 1980) or the relationships between heuristic search processes and extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1988a, 1988b).

An ecological perspective on autobiographical memories should specify physical and social properties of the world available to be ex- perienced, for example, persons, locations, times, objects, and events. The individual’s relationships to those properties, namely, the social or psychological activities engaged in that give meaning to experience, should be elaborated in detail. Theories of mental representations and of self-knowledge and theories of instantiation and construction are dependent on these specifications.

One focus of an ecological perspective on autobiographical mem- ories has been on the possible functions of remembering personal experiences. These explorations have been both idiographic (e.g., Bar- clay & Hodges, 1990; Nelson, 1989) and nomothetic (e.g., Barclay, Hodges, & Smith, 1990; Barclay & Subramaniam, 1987) in method. There has been an interest in both consistencies across persons and individual differences, including an examination of exceptions or ”pathologies” in remembering (e.g., Butters & Cermak, 1986; Crovitz, 1986). Manipulative (experimental) approaches have been taken (e.g., Barclay & Wellman, 1986) to demonstrate the cognitivist position that what people do and say is mediated in many instances by desires, beliefs, and intentions (Olson, 1988).

Uses of Autobiographical Memories

We propose that autobiographical memories are used in two major ways: intrapsychologically and interpersonally. Three subclasses of in-

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Autobiographical Remembering 235

trapsychological functions have been discussed in the literature: to maintain coherence in one’s life history and sense of self (Allport, 1955; Barclay & Hodges, in press; Epstein, 1973); to regulate one’s own feelings (Smith & Barclay, 1990), as in coping with anxiety and bore- dom (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1982); and to imagine others as selves (Robinson & Swanson, 1990). A fourth intrapsychological subclass, generalized from the work of Markus and Nurius (1986), would be to use personal memories as the contents of thought to imagine and theorize about possible future selves. Interpersonally, autobiographi- cal memories can function to establish and maintain different kinds and qualities of intimate relationships, such as emotional or intellec- tual (Neisser, 1988b; Schaefer & Olson, 1981), thereby partly regulating and mediating the emotions of others (Smith & Barclay, 1990). Accord- ing to Neisser (1988b), the interpersonal use of autobiographical mem- ories is most important from an evolutionary point of view, presumably because social relations facilitate survival.

Origins of Autobiographical Memories

Neisser (1988b) argued, after Trevarthen (1983), that interaction be- tween persons yields mutuality of observed actions (nature, direction, timing, and intensity) and this mutuality forms what is termed inter- subjectivity. Intersubjectivity is hypothesized as the basis of an “inter- personal self .” Furthermore, ”primary intersubjectivity,” or the mu- tual coordination of concurrent and coherent activities and feelings (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985; Trevarthen, 1990), is observed in very young infants (6-12 weeks old) in interpersonal exchanges with their mothers.

We propose that intersubjectivity is an emergent property of in- teractions, especially when autobiographical memories are used to forge relationships. Autobiographical remembering is governed by and governs actions and feelings, providing a sense of relatedness between individuals (also see Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 1990). This function of autobiographical memories may have biological roots in attachments (Bowlby, 1969); in particular, (re)construction of the personal past may serve to reconstitute feelings of comfort and warmth (Smith & Barclay, 1990). After these early developments, the articulation (via the inter- nalization of social speech; Vygotsky, 1978) of memories in scripted forms (Nelson, 1990) or through inferencing and conversational re- membering (e.g., Edwards & Middleton, 1988) is a speech and lin- guistic activity that represents the past in the present as growth pro- ceeds through the first 2-4 years of life. It is not necessarily the case,

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however, that the use of autobiographical memories to establish or maintain intimacies is a conscious process imbued with intention, al- though it can be in certain situations.

If Nelson (1990) is correct in her claims that autobiographical mem- ories have social origins (also see Fivush, 1991), then these relation- ships may depend in turn on the person’s capabilities to relate to others at a fundamental level of affective connectedness and mutually regulated activity. Recent studies of autistic children, for instance, suggest the hypothesis that they evidence differences from nonautistic children in the structure of personal memories and autobiographical remembering activities, specifically because they have difficulty estab- lishing mutuality (intersubjectivity) in relationships (Hobson, 1990; Loveland, 1990). Altogether, the literature cited herein suggests that the origins of autobiographical memories are in relatedness, and in- terruptions of mutually regulated affectivity might interfere with the acquisition of a socially governed autobiographical remembering process.

HISTORICAL AND NARRATIVE TRUTH IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES, AND THE PROCESS OF ATTITUDE JUSTIFICATION

A consideration of how autobiographical memories are used cuts across psychosocial boundaries and illustrates the reciprocal relation- ship between affect and remembering, as this is seen from an ecolog- ical perspective. One approach to examining the uses of personal recollections in greater detail is to analyze carefully the properties of autobiographical memories. In particular, the accuracy of autobio- graphical memories has been studied to show how attitudes, feelings, emotions, and beliefs, what Bartlett (1932) labeled “schema,” can me- diate the (re)construction of the personal past. Consistent with Bart- lett, we theorize that (re)constructive memory processes justify an affective state in the present, presumably a state similar to one expe- rienced in the past. In this way the intrapsychic (coherence) and inter- personal (affective) functions of autobiographical remembering merge with the cognitive and social activities associated with (re)construction. What is remembered is accurate in the sense that narrative truth is perserved, often at the expense of historical truth (Spence, 1982). Remembering, like language, is conceptualized as a generative and effable process that serves contemporary personal and social needs.

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Historical and Narrative Truth in Autobiographical Memories

Spence (1982) wrote that “historical truth is time-bound and is dedi- cated to the strict observance of correspondence rules; our aim is to come as close as possible to what ’really’ happened’ (p. 32). In con- trast, “narrative truth can be defined as the criterion we use to decide when a certain experience has been captured to our satisfaction; it depends on continuity and closure and the extent to which the fit of the pieces takes on an aesthetic finality” (Spence, p. 31). The notions of historical and narrative truth in the study of autobiographical mem- ory correspond to a concern for memory accuracy (and corresponding certainty) and truth or authenticity (Barclay, 1988), respectively, Em- phasizing memory accuracy reflects the Ebbinghaus (1913) tradition and leads to a conceptualization of memory as mostly a retention system (i.e., a generative system from which actual memories are reproduced). An emphasis on authenticity in remembering reflects an additional concern for meaningfulness. (A similar distinction can be found in the schema-theoretic text comprehension literature, e.g., Bransford, Barclay, & Franks, 1972; Goetz, 1977; Kintsch, 1974; Rumel- hart & Ortony, 1977; Spiro, Bruce, & Brewer, 1980.) Thus, autobio- graphical memories can be both accurate and truthful; from the per- spective of the uses of memories in everyday life, recollections that are true to life serve a very common and important adaptive purpose.

Empirical studies of the accuracy of autobiographical memories are a means of demonstrating (a) the distinction between historical and narrative truth in the context of memory for everyday events; (b) the (re)constructive nature of remembering; (c) how personal rec- ollections change over time through a schematization process; and (d) the influence of various factors, especially emotion and affective tone, on memory accuracy in both the verity and verisimilitude senses.

Most of our research to date has been motivated by the traditional psychological concern for demonstrating how personal memories are mediated by attitudes and beliefs. These mediators are frequently characterized as ”self-schemata” (Markus, 1977) that function as cog- nitive generalizations derived from mundane, often routine, daily ex- periences and transitional life events. Demonstrating the mediational properties of attitudes illustrates the coherence function of autobio- graphical memories by showing that attitudes are good predictors of what people claim to remember. Specifically, we have demonstrated that people falsely recognize as their own fabricated memories that are similar in meaning to events that actually occurred in their lives.

The methodology used in the majority of studies is detailed else- where (Barclay & Wellman, 1986; Barclay & DeCooke, 1988; Barclay,

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Hodges, & Smith, 1990). In brief, participants are asked to keep daily diaries of at least two memorable events a day for 1-4 consecutive months. The diary records, termed “event records,” are collected and used to produce recognition memory tests. A recognition paradigm is used because it permits the manipulation (i.e., rewriting [paraphras- ing] or changing) of the event records, which are then presented to the participants for verification as actual events after delays of from 24 hours to 2Y2 years.

Participants are instructed to identify or judge the authenticity of those test items that represent actual events, termed “originals,” and reject all others.’ Data collection and test instructions repeatedly stress that we are interested in memory for real events, not memories of the records of those events3

The usual manipulation is to modify either the affective tone (the emotional response or evaluative reaction to an event) of the event record or some descriptive event detail in the record, thereby manu- facturing “foil events.” Modifications in tone produce evaluation foils; descriptive changes yield description foils. Manipulating affect modi- fies the evaluative function of narrative while leaving the referential function (information about what happened) intact (see Fivush, 1991; Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Changing descriptive details affects neither the referential nor evaluative narrative functions. Other foils, that is, records of events reported by a person not participating in the partic- ular study, are frequently included. In a sense, these other foils rep- resent both referential and evaluative function changes. Thus, each person’s recognition test is compiled from his or her own diary records plus the same other-foil items used for all.

Responses to test items produce two performance indexes: accu- racy and sureness. Accuracy is scored as (a) proportion correct, which is broken down into hits (correctly accepting an original item as an actual event) and correct rejections (correctly rejecting foils), and (b) errors, differentiated into misses (incorrectly rejecting an original item as a nonevent) and false alarms (incorrectly accepting foil items

’Free- and cued-recall procedures have been used in some studies (e.g., Barclay & Subramaniam, 1987) and the willing-listener paradigm (derived from the work of Gergen & Gergen, 1988) has been adapted for the collection of personal histories (e.g., Barclay &I Hodges, 1990).

’Distinguishing memory for real events from memory for records of events is necessary to guard against confounding perception-based and imagination-based mern- ones (Johnson & Raye, 1981). Even with this methodological caveat, it is noteworthy that attitudes, beliefs, and feelings represented as self-schemata could affect perception- based and imagination-based memories in similar ways but, perhaps, to different de- grees.

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as actual events) (Green & Swets, 1966). Hits and correct rejections together are interpreted as an index of accuracy in the strict sense, while misses and false alarms are presumed to reflect inaccuracy. A reinterpretation of false-alarm rates on evaluation and description foils suggests they are more indicative of a kind of memory accuracy (namely, the degree of narrative truthfulness between the foil item and memory for the actual event) than inaccuracy. Data support this rein- terpretation, because such ”errors” vary as a function of the semantic similarity between the foils and the original records from which they were written (Barclay, 1986). Other supporting evidence for this rein- terpretation is that, on evaluation foils, false-alarm rates have been shown to vary as a function of the congruency or incongruency-again reflecting an underlying interpretative dimension of perceived seman- tic similarity-between the participants’ typical mood states and the affective tone of recognition test items (Barclay, Hodges, & Smith, 1990; Barclay, Petitto, Labrum, & Carter-Jessop, 1990).

In a typical recognition memory test, participants judge the au- thenticity of a test item and their sureness or degree of confidence in their judgment. Regardless of whether these judgments are made as separate or simultaneous decisions (see Barclay & Wellman, 1986; Bar- clay, Pettito, Labrum, & Carter-Jessop, 1990), they produce similar results. Degree of sureness (from unsure [l] to sure [7]) is taken as an indication of how strongly the person believes in the accuracy of his or her event memory. An essential aspect of these data to be explained is their relationship to observed memory accuracy.

There are three major findings from our research regarding the accuracy-certainty relationship. First, memory accuracy declines over long periods of time, whereas beliefs in memory accuracy remain relatively high and stable, especially on foil items incorrectly identified as actual records. Second, memory for everyday autobiographical events becomes schematized over time. Third, predictable patterns of false-alarm rates on foil items constructed from participant’s original records can be made from a priori assessments of individual differ- ences in typical mood states (affectivity), mood states at the time events occurred and are tested, and degree of perceived optimism.

Consider the findings regarding accuracy and beliefs in memory specifically. Barclay and Wellman (1986) have shown that hit rates on original items remained high over a 1-year delay (M = .94) but de- clined to .79 after 2% years. False-alarm rates on evaluation and de- scription foils increased over 1-3-, 4-6-, 7-9-, and 10-12-month delays, averaging .40, .47, .55, and .54, respectively. The mean false-alarm rate on these item types was .50 after 2% years. Clearly, after a 1-3-month delay, performance on evaluation and description foils hovered around

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chance for the remainder of the delayed recognition tests. On one hand, performance on original items suggests great accuracy in every- day autobiographical memory over long periods of time; on the other hand, the high false-alarm rates on foils support the claim that such accuracies are coupled with certain kinds of inaccuracies in memory.

Sureness ratings (7 = sure) associated with hits on original items averaged 4.9, 6.3, 5.8,5.3, and 5.3 for each of the five delayed-memory tests. Corresponding ratings on items falsely identified as actual events, averaged over evaluation and description foils, were 5.1, 4.8, 5.6, 5.0, and 5.2, respectively; for foils correctly rejected, the ratings from the first four memory tests were 3.8, 5.5, 5.1, and 5.2, respec- tively. Sureness for correctly rejected foils was not calculated for items on the fifth test.

Together the accuracy and sureness data suggest that the partici- pants were overconfident in the accuracy of their memory. It was hy- pothesized that overconfidence was engendered by fairly stable beliefs in the sameness of the self over time, even though it may be shown empirically that perceptions of the self are quite context dependent and variable. In addition, sureness ratings reflected the fact that what was remembered was judged as accurate because the event portions of actual records were unchanged, and the modifications in affect and detail could have been more or less consistent with what the person most likely could have felt or done.

The notion that recognition judgments were driven by likelihood estimates of what the person could have been doing or feeling suggests that the participants engaged in a decision process that included set- ting subjective criteria for determining the plausibility of a test item as a record of an actual event. This possibility was examined in more detail through additional analyses of evaluation and description foils (Barclay, 1986).

It was reasoned that performance on original and foil items was mediated by the same cognitive process-a decision to accept or reject a test item on the basis of judgments of overall semantic similarity between the item presented on the memory test and the memory of the original event. Semantic similarity judgments were presumably made on the basis of information associated with schematized event representations and knowledge that maintained the subjective mean- ing of events. Conceptually, original items were the most similar (iden- tical) in meaning to real events, whereas evaluation and description foils were the least similar.

Consider next Barclay’s (1986) findings regarding the schematiza- tion of autobiographical memories. Each foil item was first paired with its corresponding original record and then rated by eight independent

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judges for the degree of semantic similarity between them (i.e., the closeness in narrative truth carried by the foil relative to the original).

The results of this analysis showed that the greater the degree of semantic similarity, the more likely the person was to identify a foil as an original event. Furthermore, after the foils were divided into high and low semantic similarity groups, the false-alarm rate jumped from approximately .38 at the 1-3-month delay to approximately .70 there- after for high-similarity foils. The error rate, however, gradually in- creased over the same intervals for low-similarity foils (approximately .20, .30, .40, and .72 for delays of 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12 months, respectively). This interaction between degree of semantic similarity and delay indicates that schematization takes place at different rates, depending on the initial closeness in meaning between a foil and the original record from which it was written.

In these initial studies and in subsequent research, we told partic- ipants that we were interested in their memory for events that occurred in their lives and not their memory for the records they made of those events (see Johnson & Raye, 1981). To demonstrate event memory and thereby locate the source of the false-alarm effects, Barclay and De- Cooke (1988) collected new diary data from volunteers who kept rec- ords of memorable events for a 2-week period. On the day after all data were collected, all participants were immediately given a recog- nition memory test; 1 month later they received a second test. Each participant’s event records were rewritten and manipulated either by changing the meaning of reported events but keeping the syntactic writing style of the event records identical or by varying writing styles while holding meanings constant by paraphrasing actual records. These two kinds of foils were then presented along with original items and other foils on both tests. The results were unambiguous and rep- licated earlier findings: Performance on original items was excellent, averaging 99% correct; performance on foils in which the meaning was changed but the writing styles was similar to the original was also high (M = 86% correct rejections); however, performance on foils in which the meaning was the same as the original but the writing style differed was strikingly poor (M = 18% correct rejections). No effect of delay interval was found. Accordingly, alternative interpretations of the findings that people cannot remember the source of their memories (memories of records or events) are unlikely (see footnote 3).

More important, these findings are consistent with the claim that autobiographical memories are not necessarily historically true (and that historical truth may not be relevant to perceptions of self-coher- ence; Spence, 1982); instead, personal recollections maintain narrative truth. False-alarm rates on foils constructed by maintaining at least

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some the semantic properties of actual events provide more an index of correct judgments regarding narrative truthfulness than an index of inaccuracy in autobiographical memories, as initially proposed by Barclay and Wellman (1986).

The final data to be presented here come from studies of individual differences associated with mood states and self-perceptions of degree of optimism. The major purpose of this work was to demonstrate that a priori identifications of attitudes, beliefs, or feelings could be used to predict false-alarm patterns on memory tests in which foil items constructed from original records were more or less congruent with attitude-related self-schemata.

The first study was of mood-congruity effects in memory among a small group of women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and a matched control sample without PMS (Barclay, Petitto, Labrum, & Carter-Jessop, 1990). Mood or affect was assessed at four different levels: globally, by group selection, with PMS women being more neg- ative in mood overall than controls; weekly, through use of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Er- baugh, 1961); daily, by having women rate the number and severity of their moods in the Menstrual Cycle Daily Diary (MCDD; Labrum, 1986); and at the time events occurred, using affect rating scales (e.g., irritable-to-cheerful, angry-to-friendly) developed by Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1984). The women evaluated their weekly and daily moods throughout data collection, during a 1-month delay between the completion of data collection and the beginning of recognition memory testing, and on the day of testing. Each woman was tested twice, once during her late follicular and ovulatory phase (positive mood) and again during the premenstrual phase (negative mood).

Again, participants wrote daily diary records of memorable events; this time, records were kept for two consecutive menstrual cycles. Each cycle was subdivided into six phases (early follicular, late follicular, ovulation, early luteal, late luteal, and premenstrual). More negative moods (e.g., depression) characterized the premenstrual phase rela- tive to the other phases of the cycle, especially for the women in the PMS group, whereas the late follicular and ovulatory phases were relatively positive (e.g., a heightened sense of well-being).

All recognition test items constructed from subjects’ actual event records were paraphrased. Two types of foils were used: one in which the affect associated with the original event was changed (affect foils) and one in which some aspect of the record content was modified (content foils). As in previous studies, the event portions of records were left as reported. For the present purposes, the key feature in foil construction was that affect changes typically reversed the affect re-

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ported in the original records. Thus, mood congruency and incon- gruency were manipulated at the event level between the affect asso- ciated with an event and the subject’s typical daily, weekly, and global mood states. In addition, mood congruency was manipulated by time of testing. Relatively positive moods at the first test were incongruent with the typical daily and global mood states of PMS women but congruent with the mood states of controls. Conversely, for the second test, PMS women experienced comparatively greater mood con- gruency relative to controls. Therefore, the degree of congruency var- ied from most congruent when mood states were similar across levels and tests (i.e., all negative for PMS women and positive for controls) to least congruent when states were dissimilar (i.e., positive for PMS and negative for controls).

The following results were of most interest: (a) Women with PMS were more depressed overall and evidenced a higher basal rate of negative moods on a weekly and daily basis than did controls, espe- cially during the premenstrual phase. (b) There was no direct relation- ship between memory performance and phase of the menstrual cycle for either the PMS or control women. (c) Greater mood congruency between group status, interpreted as global mood state (PMS-nega- tive vs. control-positive), mood state (positive vs. negative) on the day events occurred, event-related affect (positive vs. negative), and mood state (positive vs. negative) at testing yielded memory perfor- mance patterns in the expected directions.

Specifically, memory performance (proportion correct) for women in the PMS group was best when their daily moods at the time events occurred and when they were tested were both negative ( M = .56) and when both their daily mood at encoding and their event-related affect were negative (M = .52). Their performance was poorest when there was incongruency between either their daily mood at event oc- currence (positive) and at testing (negative) (M = .50) or their mood at encoding and their event affect (negative) (M = .45) and their global negative mood state. Similar, but reversed, patterns were found for women in the control group. Performance was best when their global positive mood state was congruent with their mood at encoding (pos- itive) and testing (positive) ( M = .51) and worst in incongruent states (negative-negative; M = .27). When their daily mood state was pos- itive when an event occurred and the affect linked with the event was also positive, performance was relatively good (M = .48), but recog- nition memory was poor when daily mood at encoding (negative) was incongruent with event-related affect (negative; M = .14).

In a subsequent study of a nonclinical sample of college students (Barclay, Hodge, & Smith, 1990), similar patterns of results were found

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when affectivity was codified in terms of valence (positive vs. negative) and intensity (a 7-point scale with 7 = high) instead of mood or emo- tion. Students first rated themselves on a degree of optimism scale (optimistic-pessimistic and then completed the BDI. Two diary records of memorable events were recorded per day for 28 consecutive days. One record was of an event that turned out positively, or “as best it could have”; the other event was negative. Each event was then rated in terms of how positive or negative the person thought it was. After the original event record was completed and rated, the subjects were instructed to rewrite the record so as to reverse the outcome but leave the event portion and related details unchanged. Subjects therefore created their own foils, which were subsequently presented with orig- inals (equal numbers of actual events with positive and negative out- comes whose associate foils were not sampled for testing) on a single delayed (100 days) recognition memory test.

Again, the results were consistent with the view that recognition memory is mediated by personal beliefs or attitudes. Briefly, two groups, more positive attitude (MPA) students and less positive atti- tude (LPA) students, were formed on the basis of ratings of optimism- pessimism, BDI scores, and subjects’ ratings of actual events as posi- tive or negative. Recognition memory performance on original items was excellent overall for subjects in both groups. However, for the LPA group, the proportion correct on test items constructed from records of events with positive original outcomes negated as test items was lower (M = .51) than the proportion correct for items constructed from events originally associated with negative outcomes changed to positive (M = .58). Subjects in the MPA group correctly rejected more foils with negative outcomes (M = .41) than foils with positive out- comes (M = .30). Overall, the MPA subjects (mean proportion correct = .61) were less accurate than the LPA subjects (M = .72), suggesting that more strongly held attitudes are associated with greater bias in memory, which results in poorer memory performance. Stated differ- ently, strong beliefs appear to be more associated with (re)constructive memory phenomena such as plausibility judgments, inference, and re- liance on perceptions of narrative truthfulness when an authenticity de- cision is required than are relatively weakly held, but similar, beliefs.

Apparently, recognition memory for everyday autobiographical events can be manipulated, and perhaps transformed, by information in the present (i.e., semantically similar foil items). Such information may influence autobiographical memory in ways similar to that dem- onstrated in studies of eyewitness testimony in which leading ques- tions, like foils, reshape memory to some extent so that what is re- membered fits coherently with the semantic properties of the new

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information given (Loftus, 1975) and the prevailing attitudes of the individual. What is recognized depends on one’s beliefs, attitudes, and prior knowledge of the kinds of experiences one is likely to have engaged in, all of which probably bias both the initial perception of events and the memory for those events (Neisser, 1976). The degree of perceived congruence between attitudes and contemporary infor- mation seems to determine in part the kinds of events people are willing to endorse as their own. One way to characterize attitudes is in terms of felt states (which can have enduring properties or vary from moment to moment), around which individuals compose and recompose the past in the present, and subsequently themselves.

The Process of Attitude Justification

Bartlett (1932) offered the following on the process of attitude justification:

Suppose an individual to be confronted by a complex situation. . . . An individual does not normally take such a situation detail by detail and meticulously build up the whole. In all ordinary instances he has an overmastering tendency simply to get a general impression of the whole; and, on the basis of this, he constructs the probable detail. Very little of his construction is literally observed and often . . . a lot of i t is distorted or wrong so far as the actual facts are concerned. But it is the sort of construction which serves to justify his general impression [or] “attitude.” . . . The construction that is effected is the sort of construction that would justify the observer’s ”attitude” [which is] very largely a matter of feeling, or affect . . . characterized by doubt, hesitation, surprise, astonishment, confidence, dislike, re- pulsion and so on. . . . [Wlhen a subject is being asked to remember, very often the first thing that emerges is something of the nature of attitude. The [memory] is then a construction made largely on the basis of this attitude, and its general effect is that of justification of the attitude. (Bartlett, 1932, pp. 206-207)

After Bartlett (1932), a major assumption we have woven into the theory and design of our research is that autobiographical remember- ing and the actual memories (re)constructed, result through cognitive processes, for example, reasoning, inferencing, use of metaphors and heuristics, and social processes (e. g., social [relproduction; Berger & Luckmann, 1966), all of which are nested in sociohistorical contexts and interpersonal relationships. In this view, (re)constructed autobio- graphical memories are emergents-a kind of productive remmber iq- from these mental and social activities. It is in this sense that self-

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knowledge is a construction derived from a life lived and the process- ing of perceptual and conceptual information.

At the individual level, an important consequence of conceptual- izing autobiographical memories as (re)constructed through processes of attitude justification is to propose a concept of the person (re-con- structed instead of de-constructed) as a unified thinking and feeling being. Whether feelings need inferences (Zajonc, 1980) becomes some- what of a moot point when it is realized that personally significant memories, the kind of memories essential for meaningful human re- lationships and mental health, cannot be decoupled theoretically as independent cognitive and emotional elements (in fact, if decoupling occurs certain kinds of psychopathologies can develop).

At the social level, joint or collective remembering is also a kind of constructive process parallel to productive remembering at the indi- vidual level (e.g., Middleton & Edwards, 1990). Like individual (re)constructions, collective remembering also produces emergents, or “collective memories” (Halbwachs, 1925), which may serve to link one’s own life history to a larger social and cultural context or offer a coherent theory of culture. Neisser (1982), in fact, argued a similar point in his interpretation of the role that “flashbulb memories” play in benchmarking individual lives. One difference between individual and collective remembering is, perhaps, the degree to which attitudes are held in common between and among individuals; nevertheless, both individual and collective remembering seem to be similar in terms of purposes and processes.

More specifically, it is proposed that interpersonal relationships can be productive interactions in the sense that joint remembering can be used to (a) justify shared attitudes (e.g., establishing common feel- ings of physical attractiveness in establishing intimacies or [re]constructing a marriage history to rationalize divorce) and (b) construct a coherent, causal-explanatory framework for under- standing social and cultural phenomena. In brief, productive interac- tions justifying shared attitudes and theory building around social and cultural activities could have the consequence of shaping history and culture.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-COMPOSITION

Information or knowledge can be conceptualized as personal culture (as in memories) and in society as public culture (in, e.g., literature, architecture, art, or monuments). Knowledge, as mental representa- tion, originates via perception from the physical, biological, and social

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world, and from reflection through which the contents of thoughts are thoughts themselves. This view need not imply a Cartesian (mind- body, inside-outside) dualism-although it frequently does-if the psychosocial processes of knowledge production (e.g., dialogical pro- cesses; Buber, 1958; Mead, 1933; Vygotsky, 1962) are distinguished from their products (see Jopling, 1990). That people and societies re- member and forget is assumed to occur through productive processes at the individual and collective levels. The consequence of these pro- cesses is new knowledge that is kept in some form and used for some purpose. For example, personal memories can be comforting or hor- rifying at times, and power and authority relationships can be main- tained in society through iconic representations of ideologies.

Self-knowledge would appear to have no special status relative to other types of knowledge. However, knowledge takes on properties of self-knowledge, depending on how it is used. Using knowledge in certain ways produces qualities that transform the knowledge from personally insignificant to significant.

The larger relevance of studying autobiographical remembering to a psychology of personal constructs is to imagine the self as a com- positional process-we compose ourselves in the productive acts of remembering and interacting, thereby creating a sense of personhood (intellectually and emotionally) and relatedness in the present. In this perspective, it is not necessarily the case that autobiographical mem- ories are memories of self-referenced information (Brewer, 1986); such a conceptualization presupposes a self against which knowledge is referenced. What is represented at the individual level are les souvenirs autobiographiques that result from productive remembering and inter- acting. As memories saved to form self-knowledge, or, more generally, self-theories, these souvenirs were composed initially when feelings were interpreted. Memories as self-referenced information are mem- ories in reference to themselves, recollections that were adaptive that lead to connectedness to others and comfort to oneself. Thus, the self is not just an instantiation of a memory trace any more than productive remembering is the calling forth, through retrieval processes alone, of stored information. Instead, the self can be conceptualized as an emer- gent property of compositional activities associated with productive remembering and productive interacting. Accordingly, compositional activities are one means through which the self can be realized.

In this view, to know one’s self is to experience the compositional process directly. For this reason, Barclay and Hodges (1989) argued that improvisational selves are composed and recomposed in autobio- graphical memories. Compositional activities, which are bounded by cultural-historical, social, and psychological factors, can create per-

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sonal recollections through a process of individual and collective atti- tude justification. Instant self-compositions, like other improvisational processes, must draw on a variety of resources that are put in the service of personal being (Harre, 1984) in the present.

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