Parker, E., Cahill, L., & McGaugh, J. (2006). A case of unusual autobiographical remembering. Neurocase,12, 35-49.
Schmidt, Henk G., Boshuizen, Henny P.A. & van Breukelen, Gerard J.P. (2002). Long-term retention of a theatrical script by repertory actors: The role of context. Memory, 10, 21-29.
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Parker's article describes the unique case of AJ, a woman with an increased ability to remember autobiographical events and their corresponding dates. Although AJ is able to recall autobiographical memories with considerable accuracy (as verified with personal diaries), there are significant constraints on AJ's overall memory capacity. AJ's ability does not appear to be fully active from birth, but presents a kind of delayed onset or development. Similarly, it does not translate across all avenues of remembering, in that AJ can not memorize random dates or series of data, as they are not personally significant to her. These distinctions from previous cases of superior memory are important, placing AJ in a memory class all her own. What seems interesting in AJ's case is the chronological limitation to her recall. She identifies a specific point at which her memory increases, corresponding with a family move from the east to the west coast. At the same time, her memories gain enhanced clarity, and it marks the beginning of the calendar time period from which she can pull detailed memories with amazing accuracy. It seems interesting that her memory shifts around age 14, making me curious as to the developmental implications for her memory until that age. That is, it seems that if AJ's neural development is causally linked to her memory difference, then perhaps age 14 may be a kind of settling point in the development, leading to a "clearer" picture of her autobiographical past from then on. It is also mentioned that AJ has experienced anxiety and depression throughout her life, along with sleep issues and several 'phobias'. I wonder to what extend the depression influenced or interacted with her memory, or vice versa?
On several occasions throughout this course I had wondered at the ability of actors’ to learn and recall hundreds of lines in the course of a play, and thousands on the assumption that they would be performing in multiple shows. My assumption had been that their ability to “feed” off one another helped cue the lines and I had not even considered the availability of spatial or visual cues to provide a subsequent context for recall. Boshuizen & Breukelen (2002) showed the importance of association (or in other words, the ‘feeding’ off the preceding lines of text) However, remove the contextual clues (spatial, temporal, visual and emotional) and the average rates of recall decline (from .87 while performing the play, to .81 without these clues). I wondered about the plasticity of the brain in this regard. Would the hippocampus or other parts of the brain used in rote memorization which were “expanded” with constant activation become overridden by other parts of the brain now being activated more? It seems as if these actors were still able to recall a substantial portion of their lines months later, however the pattern shows a decline. If these actors in essence “stopped” acting, would it become harder for them to pick up the skill once again?
In the Park, Cahill & McGaugh (2005) article, I was skeptical of the woman they called AJ who claims a memory which is “nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic”. Her memory was extraordinary for dates and events in her personal narrative which interested her and her journals which extended a span of 24 years emphasized her enjoyment of personal narration. My skepticism lies less in the idea that she is “faking” her talent, but instead that her compulsion with writing down detailed accounts of every day, talking constantly about her memories, marking her calendars in miniature notes which are so extensive she has trouble unveiling what they say, would certainly substantiate an argument for constant reinforcement. While certainly there is no disputing that recalling a specific day of the week when given a date is remarkable, with her obsessive tendencies and family history of mental illness, I would argue that not only is some serious brain imaging in order, but that her tendency to constantly ruminate is a mnemonic device only as astonishing as other mnemonic devices tend to be. It would appear that her compulsion to remember is exactly that and instead of this being a prodigal case, that in fact some neuro-circuitry, not unlike in cases of synesthesia, may be misfiring. She claims she wants “help”, but yet states “I don’t think I would never want to have this…”
(This post is just in case I owe you another)
As an actress, I found the Schmidt article very interesting- not only does it provide interesting insight in the study of memory, but I feel it also, in essence, validates the work of actors and the importance of emotion and investment in theater. It reveals that the actual blocking and feeling that is connoted by the actors is ultimately more important than the surface language. Ultimately, it is the general thoughts and feelings that drive a show, and not the rote memorization of lines- basically, lines are nothing without feeling. There have been multiple times in theater where I have found myself on a stage and someone has forgotten their line, but the moment is quickly resolved by improvisation- as long as something is said that follows the general 'gist' of the show, the audience is typically never the wiser.
I think this research also has profound implications in the educational paradigm. Despite the fact that education rooted in rote memorization may produce mnemonists such as S or VP, all this studying can only produce a very specific kind of memory, which is entirely surface (it never mattered whether the words remembered had a meaning or not). Despite the benefits of rote memorization as mentioned in the beginning of Schmidt's article, ultimately it is the elaboration on MEANING that is imperative to true learning. This also hits on one of the core problems with the current secondary educational system- one that relies on memorization and subsequent recall/recognition (in the form of exams), but technically little elaborative encoding is required. One could learn a meaningless string of associations (like S or VP) to remember material, and be able to make it through school without ever needing to actually interpret the information.n
AJ’s move from the east coast to the west coast sounds almost like an early reminiscence bump that, in her case, became a bump that never ended. As stated in the article, AJ was under a lot of stress and was very unhappy. After moving to the west coast, her memory started to become better than it was before, and the period before moving is “fuzzy”. AJ also suffers from anxiety, so it would make sense that such a drastic move would be able to trigger an early reminiscence bump, much like the reminiscence bumps of the bilingual participants who moved to another country. AJ’s memory is only exceptional when she is interested in the event that happened that day or if it was important. Regarding other types of memories, AJ is about average.
In the article, the examiners take note to say that AJ was particularly unhappy when she did not know the answer of if she was confronted with a problem that she knew she would not be able to remember well. I find this notation to be really interesting because I thought that it was common response to respond unfavorably when a person fails to remember something. I find the descriptions of her personality in the article very interesting, especially compared to the personalities of other people who have good memory, such as S.
In the Schmidt article, the observation that verbatim recall relies largely on what Rubin referred to as “associative chaining of surface structure units” makes a lot of sense to me as a spoken-word poet. Oftentimes at readings when a reader loses their place in a memorized piece they remain stuck until the repeat the lines prior to the forgotten one to pick up the rhythm again. However I disagree with the assertion that verbatim memorization does not involve the attachment of meaning. Particularly in poetry, syntax and phrasing are precise and illicit meaning, therefore while the gist of a poem may be more easily remembered, the specific way it was written has its own importance. I do however agree that regurgitating memorized answers for school exams is not conducive of true learning and understanding. Similarly, the actors’ results reflect the importance of meaning-oriented learning, based on the amount f paraphrasing which occurred.
I’m interested in Bahrick’s conviction that overlearned material seems to be immune to forgetting. It’s been over a decade and I still remember a song I sang in my second grade play as Freddy the frog. I have only a vague recall of what the play was actually about, but I’ve never forgotten that song. I wonder if retention is higher for novel experiences or something repeatedly rehearsed.
It seems natural that the mise-en-scene would provide actors with context and cue retrieval. Visio-spatial prompts, as well as gestures provide something for the memory to be attached to. In a way it reminds me of the loci memorization technique we spoke about last class, wherein a sequence may be more easily remembered if placed along an imagined path.
Intelligence? Intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills, which is a very vague definition for all that humans are capable of. We’re capable of so many different abilities with memorizing, problem solving, communication, etc. so how can we really measure intelligence? For a while, the IQ test seemed to measure a person’s intelligence, but seems to fading as an accurate method to measuring a person’s intellectual capabilities. For example AJ scored typical on the test, but has incredible autobiographical memory dating back from 1974. Is there a reliable way we can actually measure intelligence in the future? Would we want to?
Today, it seems like intelligence expands reality. We study AJ and S who are extreme savants with exceptional memory to understand how the circuits and the networks of the brain work. For the ordinary individual, AJ and S are remarkable like higher gifted primates that prove no limit.
The reading about actors and their memorization of lines reminds me of our discussion in our last class meeting on what strategies we use to remember things like songs, mnemonics, etc. The study on actors supports the notion that interpretation rather than memorization more accurate and that certain position (sitting or standing) helped to cue their lines. I believe this since lots of actors will testify that the location of where the line was learned helps retrieve the line. For instance, if walking towards a table helps you remember to say a line or where you learned the lines helps you remember it. We do this as well in ordinary instances where we ask, “Where did I leave my keys? Right, on the corner table.” There seems to be a relationship between location and retrieval, gesture and language. These connections of senses might be intelligence, the ability to use two or more functions together to achieve a goal is intelligent.
I thought that the study on AJ, “A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering” was extremely fascinating, but also raised a lot of confusing questions. I find it amazing that AJ is the first reported case of someone with this kind of exceptional memory. AJ’s superior memory has do with her ability to recall any date from 1974 (when she was 14 years old) to the present, and describe where she was, what she was doing and what day of the week it was, and her ability to recall newsworthy events that are personally interesting to her and that fall after she was born. I do not know if I believe that her “traumatized move” caused her memory to become enhanced, but it does seem ironic that there was a change in her memory at age eight when her family moved from the east coast to the west. After the move she started to organize her memories, and she even states that after the move her memories became clearer, at age 10 she began keeping a diary, first became aware of her detailed memory at age 12, and at age 14 onward the recall became automatic. However, she says that even before the move she had always had a richly detailed memory for episodes, therefore the enhancement of her recall abilities over the next few years probably just had to do with the fact that her brain was still developing. Therefore I do not necessarily believe that her “trauma” of moving changed her memory.
AJ kept diaries nearly every day from the age of 10 to 34, and said that she was obsessed with writing things down because things would stay in her mind if she did not write them down in her diary. Even though she said that she rarely went back to review them, writing daily entries in a diary for 24 years definitely helps to encode memories further. What I find so interesting about this case is that AJ’s exceptional memory is very specific in that it is only for dates and personal autobiographical information related to those dates, and that she must be interested in something in order to remember it. She says that she never excelled in school and always had trouble remembering dates in history, arithmetic, foreign languages and science. Thus her memory is unlike others with superior memory in which studies have been conducted showing their ability to perform memory feats with meaningless information such as learning long displays of words or digits and repeating them back. Her superior memory is highly personal and autobiographical. AJ is not a gifted memorizer. She says she has to make lists to help her remember, she reports have a hard time with rote memorization for things such as learning history dates and poetry. She enjoys talking about her memory and can talk at great length about events from her personal past, however she does not like being asked questions that she cannot find the answer to. Her recall of events from her past is immediate, confident, and with considerable emotion. She says that her memories are vivid and like a running movie, and that her remembering is automatic and not under her conscious control. Her answers were immediate and quick therefore she never takes time to really think about them. Even though she can recall dates and events with great accuracy, her memory is all incredibly personal, and one recollection cues another, linking one recollection to the next, showing how her retrieval mode once turned on becomes automatic.
I am so intrigued by how specific her memory is and how it is so deeply personal. The authors, Parker, Cahill, and McGaugh even talk about how paradoxical it is that someone with such a powerful autobiographical memory and extraordinary ability to recall dates and events was unable to recall or recognize the details of a videotaping from the month before. She even repeatedly told them that she was a terrible memorizer! Therefore showing how even though her autobiographical memory is incredible, it is extremely selective and even ordinary in some ways. This brings up the question of just how unique is AJ’s memory if only one part of her memory (autobiographical) is exceptional?
I wanted to also talk about something that the authors mention in the discussion about how many of their colleagues have suggested that there is nothing particularly remarkable about AJ’s memory. Their colleagues question how do we know that she isn’t rehearsing, practicing, and preparing in order to fool us into believing her memory is extraordinary. I think it is very obvious that she isn’t rehearsing, practicing or preparing in advance. As the authors mention, AJ never knew in advance the hundreds of dates and events she was going to be asked by them, so as a result she would not know what to prepare. Also, there’s no way that if she did not have this exceptional memory and was just trying to impress that she could sit down and try to remember dates of all her autobiographical events by looking at her diaries from the ages of 10 to 34, and then recall them. It was be utterly impossible. When AJ was given a specific date she would immediately, and without prompting, tell her recollections. If she were just faking it she would have to take a lot of time to recall these memories, the fact that her recalls were so automatic and quick and “without her conscious control” shows that she truly has an exceptional memory.
What I am confused about though is the nature of this atypical memory. The authors contemplate on factors of different brain functioning in AJ that could be the reason for her exceptional memory, but they do not come to any final conclusions. The reason for this being that this is the first reported case of a person with this form of superior autobiographical memory, and that there is not much research on forms of superior memory. Therefore there is very little evidence of superior memory cases to sufficiently compare AJ’s case to. They suggest calling AJ’s form of autobiographical memory syndrome hyperthymestic syndrome referring to a person who spends an abnormally large amount of time thinking about his or her personal past, and the person has an extraordinary capacity to recall specific events from their personal past. They come to a conclusion that AJ’s superiority seems particularly evident for semantic or general autobiographical memory, however her episodic recollections are comparatively limited. Even though AJ talks about how she enjoys recollecting about her events from her personal past, she also says that she lives with a memory that dominates her life. She says that her memory is non-stop, uncontrollable and exhausting and that she runs her entire life through her head every day. She thinks about the past all the time and cannot let go of things because of her memory. She says that her remembering is soothing but also burdensome and that her mind is “a running movie that never stops.” I cannot even imagine having a memory like this. The authors noted that she has anxiety issues, that she is obsessive compulsive, and that she needs a sense of control over her life, but I am surprised that she is not deeply depressed or has other issues. She must have found a way to deal with her exceptional memory of her past in order to not go completely crazy and let her mind rest at times. It seems like it is an incredible gift but also an incredible burden.
AJ is the most familiar patient case that I have read about in this class thus far. She is very emotional about her vast amount of memories. She does not just recall television dates and stories or the Oscars. She remembers what she did each day from way back in her past. She remembers a lot of negative events from her childhood. It is interesting how the “symptoms” of her rare ability drastically improved when she was married. The death of her husband must have so hard to recover from. She can’t move on from anything traumatic or sad in her life because she never forgets anything. She holds onto pieces of her past whether tangible or psychological. The fact that she meticulously wrote in her diary is also intriguing. She is so wrapped up in her story, narrative. This must keep her in a very isolated place. How can one see everyone through the lenses of their past actions. No one is perfect. If I were her friend I would feel constantly judged by her. I had a friend in high school that had Aspergers syndrome and he would constantly remind me of what I had done in the past. He knew what day I had flaked out on him and in what particular circumstance. Even to this day he has vivid memories of how I have mistreated him in little ways in the past. I have another friend who took takes tons of photographs, she always has. She holds onto all of them. When she looks at any given photo she can pinpoint the time of the year and what she was doing at the time. She has been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It is said that AJ has OCD as well. I would like to find out more about the connection between OCD and Super-Autobiographical Memory.
In this study, Parker, Cahill, and McGaugh work with a woman who has an extraordinary capacity for remembering autobiographical events. AJ can recall nearly every day of her life after the age of thirteen, and when given an event, she can recall what day that occurred on as well—as long as it pertains to a subject which interested her. For example, she can remember vast quantities of television programs, but has no recollection for significant sports games or most political events. Curiously, her memory didn’t extend to schoolwork, which she professed to hating. She was also unable to remember series of numbers or do well on other memory tests. AJ also kept detailed diaries, which the researchers used to quiz her memory. At first, I was somewhat skeptical reading about AJ’s case. For one thing, the researchers stressed repeatedly that she had sought them out, regaling them with tales of her incredible memory. There was also the 20/20 special which interviewed her, and I personally remember reading an article in a woman’s magazine about her a few months prior to this class. She just seems very eager to exploit this memory thing, as much as she refers to it as a curse. While it’s unlikely she would have memorized her vast number of diaries, it is possible, and certainly writing the diaries helped her rehearse her memories. However, there were a few incidents which helped persude me AJ was truly gifted, one of which being her ability to remember the date of every Easter for the past dozen years and what she was doing, even though Easter changes annually and AJ is Jewish.
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