Autobiographical memory

Psychologist Dr. Doping about the perception of biography, inheritance from parents emotional profile and understanding of happiness in old age.

Most of the people who now live in the world, have three wonderful abilities. This ability is really wonderful, as follows: firstly, they are convinced that they have a past, every one of them; secondly, they occasionally remember some pictures or stories, or rather, in their minds there are full details of these stories are attributed to his personal past, that is, people remember episodes from their past; Thirdly, people behave in succession with respect to its history. That is, they do not wake up every day and begin life anew, and act on the basis, as if knowing, believing that date, preceded by a series of events that determine their choices, actions, thoughts and plans.

And, it would seem that in this strange? But these three abilities I would have joined in the common name of autobiographical memory. And autobiographical memory, if we look to the memory of the whole of history, the history of the development of memory, so new. The vast majority of living beings in the world by these three powers do not possess at all. They have another type of memory, called semantic memory. That is, they build on the basis of his experience of life a model of the world in which they can navigate. And this memory is at all. Only a very small number of entities, namely in higher primates (there is a discussion that can be, in some species of birds), there is a following ability, which is called episodic memory: they have to fix in time, remember it time-related episodes from its quite-recent past - maybe a few minutes ago, maybe a few hours ago. Again there is a discussion that may have a few days ago, but no more. And only a man (and not any man, but a man has developed to a certain extent) finds this unique ability to remember his life story or believe that he remembers it, that in fact it would be more accurate to say.

But here is a question: "When?" And "how?". I think that autobiographical memory in the form in which it currently exists (by the way, it is constantly evolving, changing right before our eyes) appeared recently, probably less than a hundred years ago. This, of course, does not mean that a thousand years ago, people did not remember myself, but they remembered themselves at a much smaller time intervals than we can do it now. The second question is: where does it come from? And autobiographical memory, as opposed to those kinds of memory, of which I have said before, does not occur by itself. And to these powers have emerged, evolved and became the basis and support for what is called the human person, the child should not only be born a man (this is not enough), and born a man in a very special environment, namely: it must surround adults that, firstly, too, already have autobiographical memory, and secondly, are willing to devote their time and energy on something to grow, specifically to develop this function in the child. Therefore, for example, children who are brought up in orphanages and deprived of communication with adults (communication with their peers is quite enough), then in a very poor form of developing this function, which leads to huge problems and very specific type of person who then remake almost impossible.

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How does this happen? There is usually a nonspecial. Actually, right now, probably, there are conscious parents with a child who is taught to plan how many words a day, or do any special exercises. But in a normal situation just adults, especially the mother, of course, communicate with the child, and among other issues often ask him questions about what happened to him today, what happened to him in kindergarten, reminiscent of what happened yesterday, when they somewhere to go together, on a visit to his grandmother or go to the zoo. And, apparently, in these light conversations formed a very important thing (I think this is one of the most important things), namely: the child intuitively, of course, begins to understand himself, that it is important that it interests him a close friend, and he learns to remember and describe the events that capture the important aspects of himself, his interaction with the world, and so on.

The frame, which is formed in an autobiographical story, which grows and autobiographical memory forms the personality. If the self-assessment of an adult, for example, it is important to its financial condition or something else - the beauty or age, it is discussed as a child by his parents with him. It is these aspects of his personality were recorded. What is very important, autobiographical memory is very different in different cultures. Adults in different ways to talk to children about themselves, and obtained different personalities. For example, in European culture, discussing what the child did. "What did you do today? Why did you come with a bruise from kindergarten? You're out there had a fight with someone? "That is his own actions. In Eastern cultures, they discuss what other people did, without the participation of the child, what he had just witnessed, or included indirectly. Accordingly, it turns out western mentality Eastern mentality, personality oriented themselves autonomously, and personality, which is focused on social networks - you can say "dependent" and can say, "included in the social relations."

What I said - this is only the first step towards the development of autobiographical memory, because more people enter adolescence, he needs to have his life entirely to represent because autobiographical memory, as I said earlier, you need to plan future. I can remember what happened to me in the past, and, on this basis, imagine what will happen to me in the future, you need to do in order to achieve certain goals and avoid the other. And the teenager falls into the following very serious situation where he needs to learn to understand that a person's life and how to live, and this is also autobiographical memory.

We will explore this question for quite a long time and found out some interesting things. Specifically, for example, that, it is not aware of it the report (by the way, and adults are not aware of this report, which they affect the understanding of the lives of their own children), adolescents and young people is almost entirely borrowed from their close adults - mothers and fathers - an idea of the emotional profile, so to speak, of human life and, therefore, have the emotional profile of autobiographical memory. If there is already quite an adult feel that his life miserable, and if asked to describe the proportion of, for example, happy and unhappy past, what he says, for example: "It was my 70% of grief, and only 10% of happiness," it totally It does not mean that his life was more trouble and tribulations than another person who says that it was in his life, on the contrary, 80% of happiness and 10% of fatalities. Rather, it only means that his own parents had the same idea about his life. We borrow, without realizing it, these models view of life as a whole, are living their lives in some individual way and remember it, and this view of life drives us in accordance with these scenarios family, family patterns. There is also huge cultural differences, and it is also very interesting.

And finally, if we talk about the development of autobiographical memory for life, is the old age. Here in general autobiographical memory comes to the fore, because if before this all the time - the memory for the future (for the child to become an adolescent, teenager, in order to plan their lives), the elderly people are drawn to the past. And one of the main meaning of his life - to create a connected story of its past in order to pass it on to future generations, or to go through a certain sense of accomplishment of his life, to live life fully and completely. And there is good news. Whereas all other forms of memory (semantic, episodic memory, the more working memory, which is due to the orientation of the "here and now") deteriorate with age dramatically, this does not happen with an autobiographical memory. This is the only feature that improves with age.

Memory itself an elderly person is much brighter, fresher and richer than the memory of the young man himself. And he remembers, and remembers things that happened ten years ago, with a lot of details and, most importantly, to experience the full confidence that it was in fact, and as it was. Of course, here to help a variety of external support - I mean photos, some souvenirs, familiar places and meet other people with whom these events were experienced in the past. It is said that autobiographical memory, perhaps to a greater extent than other types of memory, is divided in nature. That is what I can think of one in some situations - it's not something that I can think of another person. What I am discussing with other people, what is put to any external media, I can think of building on these carriers. And if all these facilities are available, the elderly person can not maintain a robust and healthy autobiographical memory, but on the contrary, it is also to develop a greater extent.

In autobiographical memory has its own laws, which differ from other types of memory, and allocate this type of memory. Both the first, probably, that I would like to say - is the "effect of rose-colored glasses," as it is now called conditional people who work in this field. Around it is clear that behind this, namely, is the fact that when people remember their past, the events that were experienced as very unfortunate, remembered as less unhappy. That is, over time the intensity of negative emotions is reduced, and the intensity of positive emotions, by contrast, increases. It turns out that our autobiographical memory in healthy people working in such a way that, in general, is not very important what happens to us now, but just what is important is that sufficient time has elapsed after the event, then it will already be remembered as a positive and happy regardless of how it actually was.
And it is extremely important mechanism that provides general psychological well-being. It was clarified strange fact that people are generally happy. When people are asked whether they are happy, they say yes. And this seems to be no reason for this happiness is not. Moreover, the level of happiness does not depend on education, or on the financial situation or by having a family, or even from illness and disability, and dependent on the only thing - the age. The older people get, the happier they feel. What adds to the age when all the contrary, mainly subtract a? Adds autobiographical memory. I was, of course, is now talking about the norm.

It turns out that when a person who has lived a long life or having a long autobiographical memory, remembers the past, it is past due to this mechanism, it seems happy, even if there were a lot of difficulties. Even there was a war, a famine, some difficulties, but I was young and now remember it as a happy time. And compared with this huge capital, the jewel of this experience and memory, thus processed, those troubles, some losses here and now or in the near future are expected, on the scale are less significant. And to live a good life - this is probably accumulate capital on their experience and their memories and to properly dispose of them.