Reviews and integrates the many theories, perspectives and approaches in the field of autobiographical memory.

Autobiographical memory is constituted from the integration of several memory skills, as well as the ability to narrate. This all helps in understanding our relation to self, family contexts, culture, brain development, and traumatic experiences. The present volume discusses contemporary approaches to childhood memories and examines cutting-edge research on the development of autobiographical memory. The chapters in this book written by a group of leading authors, each make a unique contribution by describing a specific developmental domain. In providing a multinational and multicultural perspective on autobiographical memory development—and by covering a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, this state-of-the-book is essential reading on the autobiographical memory system for memory researchers and graduate students. It is also of interest to scholars and students working more broadly in the fields of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, and to academics who are conducting interdisciplinary research on neuroscience, family relationships, narrative methods, culture, and oral history.

The organization of the first Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) conference centered around two specifically identifiable research topics -- autobiographical memory and eyewitness memory. These two areas -- long-time staples on the menu of investigators of memory in more natural settings -- differ on a variety of dimensions, perhaps most notably in their specific goals for scientific inquiry and application. For many questions about memory and cognition that are of interest to scientific psychology, there have been historical as well as rather arbitrary reasons for their assignment to the autobiographical or eyewitness memory fields. Perhaps as a result of differing historical orientations, the first volume's seven autobiographical memory chapters focus upon the qualities or types of recall from research participants, whereas the seven chapters in the eyewitness memory volume generally focus upon the quantity (a concern for completeness) and accuracy of recall. This interest in the ultimate end-product and its application within the legal process in general encourages eyewitness memory investigators to modify their testing procedures continually in an attempt to gain even more information from participants about an event. Indeed, several of the eyewitness memory chapters reflect such attempts. Beyond the specific contributions of each chapter to the literature on autobiographical and eyewitness memory, the editors hope that the reader will come away with some general observations: * the autobiographical and eyewitness memory fields are thriving; * these two fields are likely to remain center stage in the further investigation of memory in natural contexts; * although the autobiographical and eyewitness memory chapters have been segregated in these two volumes, the separation is often more arbitrary than real and connections between the two areas abound; * the two research traditions are entirely mindful of fundamental laboratory methods, research, and theory -- sometimes drawing their research inspirations from that quarter; and * the two fields -- though driven largely by everyday memory concerns -- can contribute to a more basic understanding of memory at both an empirical and a theoretical level.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Theories of Memory brings together some of the most influential researchers currently working in the area of memory. Individual chapters cover a wide range of key areas of memory research, but throughout the book the main emphasis is on theoretical issues, how they relate to existing empirical work and what implications they have for future work in the area. Topics covered include: the development of different memory abilities, the case for different subsystems in memory, and the structure of different memory subsystems. Different views on the level of explanation offered by our theories of memory are discussed. Not only do the contributions reveal diversity in the theoretical concerns within memory research, they also illustrate a considerable range in the type of evidence that is brought to bear on these concerns. The diversity within the book reflects the vigour of modern research into memory and shows how it continues to be an important research area. Theories of Memory provides a unique state-of-the-art perspective on this key aspect of cognitive psychology.

This work is a collection of theoretical statements from a broad range of memory researchers. Each chapter was derived from a presentation given at the 2nd International Conference on Memory, held at Abano Termi, Italy, 15th to 19th July 1996. The contributions cover imagery, implicit and explicit memory, encoding and retrieval processes, neuroimaging, age- related changes in memory, development of conceptual knowledge, spatial memory, the ecological approach to memory, processes mediating false memories, and cognitive models of memory.

The meeting Theoretical Perspectives on Autobiographical Memory was held at the Grange Hotel, Grange-over-Sands, in the Lake District region of North Western England, July 1991. The workshop was financed by a generous grant from the NATO Scientific Affairs Division under the Advanced Research Workshop programme and without this funding the meeting would not have been possible: the organisers and delegates gratefully acknowledge the support of the NATO Advanced Research Workshops programme. Thirty-five scientists from five different NATO countries attended the workshop and twenty-seven delegates presented papers. The two aims of the workshop were to bring together in one forum a number of comparatively separate approaches to autobiographical memory and to promote theory in the area generally . These aims were fulfilled in the presentations and discussions, particularly the final discussion session, in which delegates focussed on the central issues of the nature, structure, and functions of autobiographical memory and how these emerge in different research areas. The present volume contains the papers arising from the workshop. We thank Mrs. Sheila Whalley for secretarial help and Fiona Hirst and Stephen Anderson für practical assistance in coordinating registration for the workshop.