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The dynamic interplay between acute psychosocial stress, emotion and autobiographical memory

Signy sheldon.

1 Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1 Canada

Jonas P. Nitschke

Jens c. pruessner.

2 Department of Psychology, University of Constance, Universitätsstraße 10, Konstanz, 78464 Germany

Jennifer A. Bartz

Although acute psychosocial stress can impact autobiographical memory retrieval, the nature of this effect is not entirely clear. One reason for this ambiguity is because stress can have opposing effects on the different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval. We addressed this issue by testing how acute stress affects three stages of the autobiographical memory retrieval – accessing, recollecting and reconsolidating a memory. We also investigate the influence of emotion valence on this effect. In a between-subjects design, participants were first exposed to an acute psychosocial stressor or a control task. Next, the participants were shown positive, negative or neutral retrieval cues and asked to access and describe autobiographical memories. After a three to four day delay, participants returned for a second session in which they described these autobiographical memories. During initial retrieval, stressed participants were slower to access memories than were control participants; moreover, cortisol levels were positively associated with response times to access positively-cued memories. There were no effects of stress on the amount of details used to describe memories during initial retrieval, but stress did influence memory detail during session two. During session two, stressed participants recovered significantly more details, particularly emotional ones, from the remembered events than control participants. Our results indicate that the presence of stress impairs the ability to access consolidated autobiographical memories; moreover, although stress has no effect on memory recollection, stress alters how recollected experiences are reconsolidated back into memory traces.

Introduction

One of the most intriguing characteristics of autobiographical memories - past personal experiences- is that they are not stored and recalled as transcriptions of our past, but rather are accessed and flexibly constructed in our minds as they are retrieved 1 – 3 . It is generally accepted that episodic memory processes supported by the hippocampus are responsible for the ability to flexibly re-construct autobiographical events 3 and evidence that episodic memory processes are altered by the presence of acute stress 4 , 5 raise questions about how stress modifies the ways autobiographical events are re-constructed. The answers to these questions are likely complex given that autobiographical memory retrieval involves multiple processing stages - from accessing a memory, to dynamically constructing an experience of the event in mind, and finally, reconsolidating it back into a memory representation - that are all affected by stress. Further adding to this complexity, emotion is thought to affect how stress impacts processes relevant to autobiographical memory retrieval 6 . Here, we aimed investigate how stress affects these different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval, and how the effect of stress on autobiographical memory retrieval is influenced by emotion 7 – 11 .

The Acute Stress Response and Episodic Memory

The effects of acute stress on episodic memory have been well-researched 4 . A key pattern that has emerged from this line of research is that two variables, namely i) when a stressor occurs and ii) if an emotion is present, moderate the effects of stress on episodic memory. Regarding timing, stress that is experienced during the encoding phase of an episodic memory task is thought to improve performance, particularly if a stressor is applied after learning and during the consolidation phase of memory 12 , 13 . It is worth noting that the effects of stress on encoding are less consistent if stress is applied prior to encoding, with some studies finding a beneficial effect 14 , 15 and others finding a negative effect 16 , 17 . Stress experienced during the retrieval phase of an episodic memory task is generally thought to impair performance 18 , 19 .

The opposing effects of stress on encoding and retrieval are explained by models of stress that incorporate two physiological responses 20 . When an acute stressor is experienced, there is a fast-acting sympathetic nervous system (SNS) response that results in the release of catecholamines (e.g., noradrenaline and adrenaline). This is followed by a slower acting system that releases glucocorticoids (e.g., cortisol in humans) via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis 21 , 22 . During encoding, noradrenaline and cortisol levels enhance learning by directing memory processes towards the to-be-encoded material [N.B., this effect is enhanced for information that is emotional 23 ]. During retrieval, increases in cortisol levels in response to stress impair the efficacy of memory processes supported by brain regions such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortical structures that are needed for successful remembering 24 , 25 .

As noted, the effects of stress on encoding and retrieval are also thought to be influenced by emotion 26 . Emotional materials can enhance the presentation of stress effects on memory because brain regions that process emotion (e.g., amygdala) are also a target of the noradrenaline and cortisol stress response 27 , 28 . Although some studies have found the benefits of stress on encoding and consolidation to be enhanced for emotional material 24 , 29 , 30 , a recent meta-analysis reported that post-encoding stress was not consistently affected by the emotional valence of information. This analysis did report, however, that stress during retrieval selectively impairs the access to emotional content 31 .

Acute Stress and Autobiographical Memory Retrieval

Given the importance of episodic memory in autobiographical memory retrieval, the above-reviewed work would suggest that stress will impair retrieving these experiences, however, findings have been inconsistent 12 , 23 , 32 . Early studies using the Autobiographical Memory Test [AMT 33 ; found that stress impaired the retrieval of personal past experiences such that fewer specific personal memories were recalled in response to retrieval cues 33 , 34 ; more recent studies, have not replicated this effect 35 , 36 . Some studies have found that emotion can influence autobiographical memory retrieval, whereas others have not found evidence for this effect 36 – 38 .

One possible explanation for these inconsistencies is that these reports have not considered that there are distinct stages of autobiographical memory retrieval 39 . Autobiographical remembering begins when there is something in our environment that cues the access of a past personal experience. Once a memory is accessed, there are other processes that will support recovering the details of that memory to help build a representation of it in the mind (recollection). Finally, after a past event is recollected, often it must be re-consolidated back into a memory. A Stress could influence one or all of these stages; moreover, it is possible that stress could differentially influence these processing stages. Here we focus on the effects of stress to the access and reconsolidation stages.

Autobiographical Memory Access

Memory accessibility is effectively measured by the speed (i.e., reaction time) to generate a memory in response to a cue. Previous work has found that individuals are faster to respond to retrieval cues when memories are accessed directly (i.e., they simply ‘come to mind’) compared to when the memories are more effortful to generate 40 – 43 . Response time differences in memory retrieval can also measure the way factors like emotion and individual variability in stress responses affect the underlying processes related to memory accessibility 44 , 45 . Following upon evidence that stressful arousal impedes memory retrieval by limiting cognitive resources 24 , one prediction is that stress will result in slower response times to access memories, due to an increased effort needed to access past events. This also follows an ease-of-retrieval account of memory, which argues that memories can be accessed more directly when there is a match between one’s current retrieval context and the to-be-accessed event 46 . If psychosocial stress can induce a negative state 47 , then a stress-induced negative state would make accessing memories that are of a different emotional valence (i.e., positive) more effortful (i.e., associated with slower response times) than accessing memories that are of same valence (i.e., negative). This prediction is also supported by the mood-memory dependence literature [for a review, see 48 , which assumes that a stress-induced negative state would enhance processing of negatively-valenced information 47 .

Autobiographical Memory Reconsolidation

Memory reconsolidation occurs when the underlying trace of a retrieved event enters a fragile state and needs to be re-stored into a memory 49 – 54 . When in this fragile state, that memory trace can become susceptible to alterations based on current retrieval circumstances, which cause that trace to be re-encoded or reconsolidated differently. There are indications that stress may lead to stronger or more detailed memory traces upon updating or reconsolidation. This is because the way stress enhances memory encoding mechanisms, particularly for emotional content 20 , 55 – 57 , is similar to how stress can influence memory updating or reconsolidation mechanisms 50 , 58 . That is, if memory retrieval is thought of as a secondary encoding opportunity, then retrieving memories under stress will lead to recollections that are more strongly reconsolidated back into memories 59 , 60 . Moreover, based on the notion that the encoding enhancement of stress is most robust for emotional content, this proposed reconsolidation enhancement should be most robust for emotional material 16 , 61 . Testing this hypothesis in humans with autobiographical memories is important, mostly because the majority of the literature supporting this finding stems from animal models (for a review, see 62 ), with only some human studies reporting the detrimental effects of stress on reconsolidation 37 , 63 .

The Current Study

Summarizing above, we tested two hypotheses about the impairing and enhancing effects of stress on 1) accessing autobiographical memories and 2) reconsolidating the associated recollections. We did this by pairing a widely used and reliable psychological stress protocol, the Trier Social Stress Test TSST 17 , 64 , 65 , which experimentally elicits the psychological and physiological stress response in laboratory settings, with a well-validated measure of detailed autobiographical memory retrieval (Fig.  1 ). Critically, our autobiographical memory task involved two testing sessions separated by a long delay (72 to 96 hours) so that we could measure processes that support memory retrieval, recollection and reconsolidation. We had two primary predictions. First, during initial retrieval, we predicted that stress would impair the ability to access autobiographical memories, and that this effect would be linked to the emotional content of a retrieval cue and the cortisol stress response. That is, following the aforementioned matching hypothesis, we predicted that stress would impair retrieval for positive but not negative memories. Second, regarding the effects of stress on recollection and reconsolidation, if retrieval serves as a secondary encoding context, we predicted that the memories initially retrieved under stress will be better recalled during the subsequent testing session and this effect will be most robust for the emotional content of the memories.

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A schematic of the experimental procedure used in the current study.

Participants

Forty-eight young, healthy, male, university student volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 years old were tested. We restricted our sample to male participants because HPA reactivity varies considerably in females due to hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle 66 and, for this reason, it is necessary to carefully track menstrual cycle phase when having female participants undergo the TSST. Because this is the first study of its kind, we sought to establish the basic effect in the more homogenous male sample to serve as proof of concept for future research. All the tested participants were fluent in English and were free from factors that could affect stress reactivity (i.e., no prior knowledge of the TSST, consumed on average fewer than 10 units of alcohol and tobacco per week, no illicit drug use, did not endorse symptoms associated with depression and/or anxiety). In addition, participants were unaware that the present study was about the effects of stress on memory and were recruited for a study on personality. We excluded four participants from the analysis, two for not meeting the above-criteria, one participant withdrew from the study and one was excluded for incomplete data collection. Thus, the final sample consisted of 44 participants (mean age = 22 years, SD = 2.6, range 18 to 30 years). All participants provided informed consent prior to the study and were compensated monetarily for their time. The study was approved by the McGill University Faculty of Science Institutional Review Board and the experiment was conducted in accordance with the associated guidelines and regulations.

Experimental design

Participants completed two experimental sessions that took place three or four days apart. Each session occurred in the same testing room and at the same time, which was always between 1 pm and 6 pm because of known diurnal changes in stress hormones like cortisol. All participants were instructed not to drink alcohol the night before and refrain from eating or drinking two hours before the start of the first session to ensure accurate measures of stress reactivity (cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA)) from collected salivary samples. During session one, half of the participants were randomly assigned to the stress group and half to the control group. As part of a larger testing battery, the experimental procedure for session one started with a series of questionnaires and computerized tasks. These were followed by the stress protocol and the session ended with an autobiographical memory test as well as other questionnaires and computerized tasks. During session two (3 or 4 days later), participants were administered the same autobiographical memory test. The tasks are described in detail in the following sections and readers can refer to Fig.  1 for a visual depiction of the experimental paradigm. The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Session one: Stress protocol

For both groups, session one began with a series of questionnaires and an unrelated experimental task that lasted approximately one hour to reduce any anticipatory or pre-experimental stress levels. The participants in the stress group then completed the TSST 17 , which involved presenting an impromptu speech and doing a challenging arithmetic task in front of two confederates posing as “expert” judges (trained confederates, one male and one female). Specifically, it constituted a mock-job interview in which the participant was given 10 minutes to prepare a speech to be given in front of the two judges who remained expressionless during the task. Following this anticipation period, participants performed a 5-minute speech, followed by a 5-minute arithmetic task in front of both judges. The TSST has been shown to reliably produce a significant increase in stress at all levels: cortisol, sAA, and subjective stress 67 – 69 . The control group performed a closely matched non-stress inducing task 70 . This task involved standing in a room alone (i.e., without any of the stressful social or evaluative components of the TSST) and talking out loud about a movie, book or vacation and then performing an easy arithmetic addition task.

For both groups, cortisol and sAA levels were collected via salivary samples to measure stress reactivity throughout this session. For each saliva sample, participants inserted a cotton swab (‘Salivette’; Sarstedt, Saint-Léonard, QC) inside their mouth without touching their lips or fingers and chewed on the swab for one minute. Cortisol levels (nmol/l) were measured using a time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay described by Dressendörfer, et al . 71 . sAA (U/ml) levels, which measure the SNS response, were determined using the enzyme kinetic method referred to in Engert, et al . 65 . Subjective stress was also evaluated using visual analogue scales (VAS) at each saliva sampling. Ten rating measures were collected by participants marking an ‘x’ on a 11 cm line with two anchors (0 = “not at all”, and 10 = “very much”) to indicate how they felt in that moment. For this study, we only focused on the ‘How stressed do you feel right now?’ scale. All measures were anchored to 7–8 time-points, in 10-min intervals, throughout the experiment from −20 to +60 min.

Session one: Autobiographical memory task

Immediately following the stress protocol, participants were given an autobiographical memory task. On a computer screen, participants were randomly presented with six cue words of different valence taken from previously published studies 72 . This included two positive words (happy, interesting), two negative words (sad, angry), and two neutral words (busy, concentrated). To each cue word, the participants were instructed to recall an associated specific past personal event as quickly as possible within two minutes. They were told that the event should be one that happened to them, happened in one location and happened over minutes or hours and no more than one day. To control for the age of the retrieved memories, participants were instructed to only choose memories that occurred in the past 6 months. When they accessed an event, they pressed ‘1’ on the keyboard as soon as possible and their reaction time was measured. The participants were then given up to three minutes to describe the accessed event and were told to describe out loud as many event details as possible. These descriptions were recorded and transcribed for later scoring. Each trial ended with participants generating an event title (a short phrase that summarized their memory that was to be used as a memory cue in session two), estimating the date the event occurred, and rating the quality of the remembered event on five measures (Table  1 ). Given that each event recall and description could take up to five minutes, session one’s memory task lasted a maximum of 30 minutes.

Subjective rating measurements collected to each specific event described for the autobiographical memory task.

*Assessed in Session 2.

Session two: Autobiographical memory task

Either three or four days later (variability due to scheduling issues), participants returned to the same laboratory testing room and were randomly presented with the event titles they generated during the first session on a computer screen. To each cue, they described out loud in three minutes as many event details as possible, as they did in session one. These descriptions were recorded and transcribed for later scoring. Participants then made the same ratings as in session one as well as two additional ratings (see Table  1 ).

Autobiographical memory scoring: Event type and details

Each described event was categorized using the scoring protocol associated with the AMT 33 . This protocol classifies events as either a specific memory (An event that lasted less than a day; e.g., “dinner party at Alan’s house last summer”) or a non-specific memory (extended memory - An event that lasts more than a day and is not specific to a single spatial context; e.g., “A road trip to Toronto”; categorical memory - an event that occurs repeatedly over time; e.g., “Going to spin class in the morning”; semantic associate - a response that contained factual information; e.g., “I am a happy person”).

The transcribed autobiographical memory descriptions were scored with the procedure of the Autobiographical Interview 73 . This protocol segments and quantifies components of narratives into details, defined as “a unique occurrence, observation, fact, statement, or thought…that independently conveys information”, which are then categorized as internal or external details. Internal details reflect the extent of episodic recollection for a specific memory as these details pertain directly to the defined event and its spatial and temporal contexts. These internal details are further categorized as event, place, time, perceptual, or emotion/thought details. In this study, we focused on the number of emotion/thought details, which are defined as descriptions of one’s own emotional state at the time of the event. External details provide information about the described memory that is not directly related to the main event described and include details regarding a tangential event, semantic information, or metacognitive statements expressed at the time of testing.

Autobiographical memory scoring: Affect rating

To obtain an independent rating of the emotional quality of the descriptions, we used the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), which is a text analysis program that compares each word in a document (in this case, the memory descriptions) to a large corpora of dictionaries and catalogs to classify them into a variety of categories (e.g., past orientation, emotional tone). To test our specific hypotheses, we focused on the number of words for each description of the memories that were classified as affective, or containing emotional content.

Data analysis

We first ran a mixed measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) on the collected emotional valence ratings for each of the memories generated during session one as a function of cue type to confirm that cue valence was reflected in the autobiographical memories and to justify including cue type as a within-subject factor in subsequent analyses. For this analysis, valence ratings were coded as either positive (ratings of 4, 5, and 6) or negative (ratings of 1, 2, and 3). Then, we calculated the proportion of memories that were rated as negative for each cue type condition and entered this as the dependent variable.

To test predictions about how stress affects memory access, we ran a 2 (group: stress vs. control) x 3 (cue-type: positive, negative, vs. neutral) repeated measures ANOVA on the average response time to recall an autobiographical memory during session one. Prior to analysis, we visually inspected the response time distribution, which revealed a non-normal distribution so these response times were log-transformed. Three identified outliers (over 3 SD above the mean) were excluded from this analysis.

We examined how stress affected memory recollection during session one by averaging the number of internal and external details generated in the descriptions of recalled memories and running a 2 (group: stress vs. control) x 3 (cue-type: positive, negative, vs. neutral) x 2 (detail: internal and external) ANOVA. We examined how stress affected memory reconsolidation with a similar ANOVA using data from session two. Significant group differences from these analyses were followed with ANOVAs with the number of emotional details contained in the memory descriptions as the dependent variable that were then followed by an ANOVA on the affective content of the memories as determined by the LIWC.

Finally, we explored significant effects of stress related to the physiological stress responses (cortisol and sAA) using correlation analyses. We used Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation for continuous or ordinal variables, respectively.

Group demographics

Table  2 illustrates the characteristics of the participants in the stress and control (placebo TSST) group. Of note, there were no differences in mean age or depression scores (BDI-II 74 ), nor were there differences in baseline mood at the time of testing (PANAS-20 75 ). Confirming our experimental manipulation of stress, the groups differed in measures of stress reactivity reported here as area under the curve (AUCi) measures – computed using the trapezoid formula described by Pruessner, et al . 76 . To measure the effects of stress on changes in mood we computed the delta-peak – absolute changes from baseline to peak stress for the VAS measure.

Stress response in the stress and control group.

Levels of significance: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1.

Session One: Effects of Stress on Retrieval

Memory valence.

To confirm that cue type categorization was reflected in the autobiographical memories, we ran a mixed ANOVA on the emotional valence ratings. There was a main effect of cue-type ( F (1,42) = 45.45, p  < 0.001, partial η² = 0.51) as well as group ( F (1,42) = 5.95, p  = 0.02, partial η² = 0.13). As expected, there was a stepwise increase in the proportion of memories that were negative, increasing from the positive to neutral to negative cue condition. Interestingly, the group effect was due to a higher proportion of memories rated as negative for the stress (0.52, SE = 0.04) compared to the control group (0.40, SE = 0.04).

Reaction time

When we examined differences in the response time to generate autobiographical experiences as a function of group (stress vs. control) and cue type (positive, negative and neutral), the results showed a main effect of group ( F (1,40) = 4.31, p  = 0.04, partial η² = 0.10) but no effect of cue-type ( F (2,80) = 0.35, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.008) nor an interaction effect ( F (2,80) = 1.53, p  > 0.25, partial η² < 0.04). Irrespective of cue type, participants in the stress group were slower to access specific autobiographical events (mean = 35 seconds; SE = 2.8 seconds) than those in the control group (mean = 28 seconds; SE = 2.7 seconds). Critically, there were no group differences in the average number of specific memories generated in response to these cues (group ( F (1,43) = 0.71, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.02), cue-type ( F (2,86) = 2.37, p  = 0.10, partial η² = 0.05), or an interaction effect ( F (2,86) = 0.81, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.02), indicating that the slower response times in the stress group were not due to this group generating a different ‘end-product.’ This group difference also held when we examined reaction times to generate only specific memories.

To determine which stress hormone was related to memory access performance, we correlated cortisol AUCi levels to these response times with a series of Pearson correlation analyses. Here, we found that cortisol levels positively correlated with response times to access memories to positive cue words ( r  = 0.44, p  = 0.003), but was not significantly correlated with time to access negative ( r  = 0.15, p  = 0.32), or neutral cues words ( r =  0.21, p  = 0.17, see Fig.  2 ). Fisher’s r-to-z transformation was used to test if the correlation values for positive and negative as well as positive and neutral cue words were significantly different from one another after accounting for dependency within the data. The z-score based on the difference between positive and negative cues (Z = 2.20) was significant (p = 0.01) as was the difference between positive and neutral cues (Z = 1.66; p = 0.05). sAA AUCi levels did not correlate with response times for any cue category (positive cues: r  = 0.02, p  = 0.92; negative cues: r  = −0.03, p  = 0.88; neutral cues: r  = 0.08, p =  0.63).

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The correlation between the cortisol response (area under the curve levels) and the average participant response time to generate memories as a function of cue word valence. The correlation between the cortisol levels and response times was significantly greater for positively- cued memories compared to negatively- and neutrally-cued memories.

Memory details and ratings

The ANOVA run on the average number of details generated when describing memories, with group (stress, control), cue-type (positive, negative and neutral) and detail type (internal, external) as factors, showed no main effects of group ( F (1,42) = 0.08, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.002), cue-type ( F (2,84) = 1.00, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.001) or any group interactions between these factors (cue-type and group: F (2,84) = 0.68, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.016; detail-type and group: F (1, 42) = 0.12, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.003; group, cue-type and detail type, F (2,84) = 0.46, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.01), although the interaction between cue-type and detail type did appear to approach conventional levels of statistical significance, F (2,84) = 2.75, p  = 0.07, partial η² = 0.06). The lack of a group effect precluded us from examining the effect of stress on emotional detail generation. We also found no group differences when we examined the ratings (vividness, emotional intensity, rehearsal, and importance) with a M(ultivariate)ANOVA (top panel, Table  3 ).

The average ratings for memories recalled during session 1 and 2. Standard error is shown in parentheses.

Session Two: Effects of Stress on Reconsolidation

The mixed design ANOVA with condition, cue type, and detail type as factors with the number of total details generated during session one included as a covariate resulted in a main effect of group, ( F (1,41) = 4.47, p  = 0.04, partial η² = 0.10), but no effect of cue-type and group ( F (2,82) = 0.33, p  > 0.25, partial η² = 0.008) nor between group and detail type ( F (1,41) = 0.001. p  > 0.25, partial η² < 0.001). Those in the stress group remembered overall more details from the re-retrieved memories compared to the control group (Fig.  3 , left panel, depicts group differences by cue type for illustrative purposes – only the main effect of group was significant). There were no group differences when the ratings (vividness, emotional intensity, rehearsal, and importance) were compared (bottom panel, Table  3 ).

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Left panel: The average number of total details generated when recalling autobiographical memories during session two. There was a main effect of group such that the stress group generated more details than the control group and here the average details are presented as function of word cue type for illustrative purposes (i.e., the interaction between group and cue type was not significant). Middle panel: The average number of emotional details generated when recalling autobiographical memories during session two. Overall, the stress group generated more emotional details than the control group. As in the left panel, the averages are presented as a function of word cue type for the stress and control group for illustrative purposes (i.e., the interaction between group and cue type was not significant). Right panel: The average affect ratings from the LIWC for the autobiographical memories recalled during session one and two for the stress and control group. For all figures, the error bars shown represent standard errors.

The significant group effect on detail generation was followed by a mixed-design ANOVA with group and cue-type as factors on the number of emotional details remembered. The total number of internal details generated during session one was included as a covariate. As expected, there was a strong effect of group ( F (1,42) = 7.28, p  = 0.01, partial η² = 0.30) and no other significant effects. Illustrated in Fig.  3 (middle panel), those in the stress group recalled more emotional details at session two, irrespective of cue-type.

We ran two analyses to follow up on the link between stress and emotional detail recall. First, we assessed the link between the increase in emotional detail recovery and initial stress hormone levels with a series of correlations (n.b., Spearman’s correlations were used here because details are an ordinal variable) between cortisol and sAA AUCi measures from session one and the number of emotional details generated during session two for each cue type. Initial (i.e., session one) cortisol levels significantly correlated with generating emotional details to neutrally-cued memories during session two (positive cues: r  = 0.19, p  = 0.23; negative cues: r  = −0.08, p  = 0.64; neutral cues: r  = 0.37, p =  0.02). Initial sAA AUCi levels also correlated positively with the number of emotional details generated to neutral cues during session two (positive cues: r  = 0.27, p  = 0.08; negative cues: r  = 0.25, p  = 0.11; neutral cues: r  = 0.39, p =  0.009). Fisher’s r-to-z transformation test indicated the correlation between sAA and cortisol levels to neutrally-cued memory’s emotional detail count was not significantly different (Z = 0.80; p = 0.21).

Second, we confirmed the link between emotion detail recovery and stress with the LIWC text analysis software that provided an overall emotional (affect) content rating of the memory descriptions, which we could compare between the groups. For this analysis, one outlier participant’s data was excluded for being three standard deviations above the mean affect rating score from the LIWC. An ANOVA with group and cue type on the affect scores revealed a main effect of cue type ( F (2,80) = 5.14, p  = 0.008, partial η² = 0.11), no interaction between cue type and group ( F (2,80) = 1.49, p  = 0.23, partial η² = 0.04), and critically, a main effect of group, ( F (1,40) = 4.24, p  = 0.046, partial η² = 0.04). Memories described by the stress group were significantly more emotional (i.e., higher affect rating) than those described by the control group during session two (Fig.  3 , right panel). When we ran this analysis with the descriptions from session one, this group difference was not present ( F (1,40) = 1.38, p  = 0.25, partial η² = 0.03; Fig.  3 , left panel), suggesting the group effect on affect ratings was selective to session two.

A common finding is that stress negatively affects episodic memory retrieval 77 . This finding has not been consistent for studies examining the use of episodic memory during autobiographical remembering. The fact that autobiographical memory retrieval involves many different stages of retrieval 78 may be a reason for these mixed findings 6 . To address this issue, our study characterized how acute psychosocial stress affected different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval: accessing, recollecting, and reconsolidating a remembered experience. Our results showed a trade-off in how stress affected accessing and reconsolidating these personal long-term memories. First, acute stress impaired the ability to access autobiographical memories in response to retrieval cues, as indicated by a slower response time to recall past personal events in stressed as compared to non-stressed individuals. Second, acute stress did not affect how these accessed memories were immediately recollected (i.e., the amount of detail generated when describing the memories under stress), but it did strengthen the ability to later recover specific details– in particular, the emotional details of these recollected memories - 72 to 96 hours later. Below we discuss the possible mechanisms and adaptive functions of these two seemingly opposite effects of stress on different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval.

First, our finding that stress increases the time to access autobiographical memories to a retrieval cue suggests that stress makes accessing consolidated personal memories less direct and more effortful. This notion is based on reports that fast response times to memory retrieval cues indicate taking a direct route to recalling a past experience (i.e., the memory simply comes to mind) whereas slow response times to a memory retrieval cues represent the use of more generative or effortful memory processes 41 .

There may be some adaptive functions for limiting access to the resources used to recall past memories when under stress. When faced with a stressor, one could imagine that it would be more adaptive to direct one’s mental resources towards encoding the current environment – the source of stress – and away from  accessing past memories that may not be relevant to one’s current scenario 79 . As such, it is likely that certain memories may be most prone to retrieval failure under stress than others. In particular, if stress is viewed as a negative state, memories that are emotionally incongruent with this state (i.e., positive) should be the ones most difficult to generate/access. This hypothesis is based on mood-congruency findings indicating that emotional material is more readily accessed (less effortful) when it matches a current mood state 80 . Although we did not find a group difference in response times as a function of memory cue valence, we did find that elevated cortisol levels were selectively related to more effortful processing of positive memory cues, consistent with the mood-congruency theory. Interestingly, cortisol but not sAA levels, which measure the fast acting SNS response, were related to response times. In fact, cortisol levels have been linked to effortful retrieval tasks 4 , which would explain why we found this link -  a greater cortisol response to stress interfered with accessing positively cued memories since these types of memories are the most effortful to access. Even though we find stress hampered the ability to access past memories, there could be some stressful scenarios that would make personal memories adaptive to retrieve. For example, recalling memories that are relevant to the current stressful situation would allow one to identify methods used in the past to cope with the stressor. Although we did not find direct support for this idea, we did find that the stress group was more likely to access memories that were rated negative in valence than did the control group - an emotional valence that matched their current situation if one assumes that stress induces a negative emotional state 47 .

While the response time to generate specific memories differed between the stress and no stress groups, the number of specific memories recalled did not differ between groups. Although fitting with some prior work 81 , this result differs from other investigations showing that stress impairs the ability to generate specific memories 34 , 38 . Methodological differences may account for these mixed results. Many studies investigating the effects of stress on accessing specific autobiographical memories do not require participants to describe memories in detail, but ask for a brief (i.e., one sentence) label of the accessed memory. By contrast, our participants knew they would be asked to describe the specific details of the recalled events, which may have modified how they initially ‘captioned’ or labeled their retrieved memories. Assessing detailed descriptions of recalled memories is a more sensitive marker of how autobiographical memories are retrieved (i.e., recollected) than scoring the type of event recovered 73 , 82 – 85 , yet even with this marker, autobiographical memories were recollected similarly by the two groups during the first testing session. As we predicted, however, memories initially recollected under stress were retrieved with more details, particularly emotional details, when retrieved after a delay. Stress affected the reconsolidation of these long-term consolidated autobiographical memories.

Specifcally, we found evidence that although stress impaired initial access to a memory, it seemed to enhance some aspects of the memory trace via reconsolidation or updating. Some have argued that reconsolidation can be viewed as a secondary encoding opportunity that is similarly sensitive to factors that affect memory formation 9 , 11 . If stress enhances memory encoding, this would explain how the presence of stress strengthened memory recollection during session two - it enhanced the re-encoding of the recollected details into the underlying memory trace when this trace was destabilized during the initial testing session. Of note, this reconsolidation effect of stress was particularly strong for the emotional content of the autobiographical memories 61 . In fact, when we correlated the initial (session one) physiological stress responses to the number of emotional details recalled during session two, there was a positive correlation between glucocorticoid (cortisol) and catecholamine (sAA) levels and the amount of emotional details that were later recovered for neutrally-cued memories. This finding extends work showing that both of these physiological stress responses (glucocorticoid and catecholamine) enhance encoding mechanisms 28 to reconsolidation mechanisms  by indicating that these levels allow details of a recalled event to be re-encoded more strongly 23 , 27 , 86 , 87 . Interestingly, this pattern specifies that these levels relate to the reconsolidation of the emotional details of an event when that event is not, in and of itself, emotional (i.e., neutrally cued).

The fact that an association between the physiological stress responses and the emotional detail recovery was not present for all the cued memories raises questions about what other mechanisms may underlie the reported reconsolidation effect. One possibility is that this is the result of a mood-congruency effect induced by the stressor. We administered the stressor prior to the autobiographical memory test, which may have induced a negative mood state in the participants. While this possible state did not affect the details initially recalled when describing memories, it may have heightened attention to or monitoring of the recalled emotional details, which resulted in a preference to re-encode the emotional materials present in a consolidated memory trace 88 .

Alternatively, stress during retrieval may heighten emotional arousal, and consequently, lead to the incorporation of new retrieval-state-based emotional content into the memory trace 50 . In our study, participants recalled autobiographical memories during session one and two in the same experimental room. Since context serves as a strong reminder of past experiences, this manipulation may have biased participants to recover the autobiographical memories from session one’s remembering experience - which could have led the stress group to also recall the arousal they felt at that time.

Despite finding an effect of stress on reconsolidating the emotional content of retrieved autobiographical memories, there are findings inconsistent with this result ( 59 , 60 , 89 ; for a review on animal findings 62 ). For example, one study found that externally administering cortisol as participants retrieved previously studied wordlists impaired the ability to recall these words after a week long delay 37 . Yet, a reason for the difference outcomes between this study (also see 90 ) and ours is the memories that were being evaluated. While this study used wordlists, we tested complex remote autobiographical events that require several interacting reconstructive processes for successful retrieval. Autobiographical memories and stimuli like wordlists are recalled using different neural mechanisms 91 , and thus may be differently affected by stress.

Another major difference to consider between our study and those with different outcomes is how the stressor was administered. In our study, we used a psychosocial stressor to induce a cortisol stress response, whereas other work has found different effects when cortisol was directly administered 37 . For example, in the study noted above,  Tollenaar et al . (2009) administered hydrocortisone. Hydrocortisone administration increases bioavailable cortisol, but the experience of a psychosocial stressor leads to a more complex response, involving not just the HPA axis with its downstream marker cortisol, but also a robust activation of the SNS, as well as increased feelings of psychological distress 64 . Since the appraisal of a situation plays an important role in the cognitive strategies used for a social task 92 , 93 , the psychosocial nature of the TSST might have influenced the recall of autobiographical memory, which often has a social component to it.

There are other methodological and analytic issues related to our study worth mentioning. One issue is that the size of the group effect (stress vs control) we report was relatively small when we examined the overall number of details recalled. However, when we focused our analyses on the emotional details generated when describing the memories, the group effect was larger. We were also able to confirm this effect when memories were assessed for emotional language using a text analysis tool - memories initially recalled under stress were later remembered with more emotional words than those not initially recalled under stress. Another issue with our study is that our experiment included only male participants. Research indicates that males and females can differ in their stress responses 94 and can show differential effects of stress on memory 14 , 95 , 96 . An important next step in this line of research is to determine whether the reported pattern of results extends to females. A final issue concerns the timing of our stressor with respect to autobiographical memory retrieval. We exposed participants to the stress before fully recollecting autobiographical memories (i.e., providing a full detailed account of the experience). Another study found different results when participants were exposed to a stressor (or control condition) after recalling past experiences - acute stress impaired the reconsolidation of autobiographical memories 97 . We suspect that a reason for this discrepancy is that this study targets different mechanisms related to reconsolidation depending on when the stressor is experienced in the retrieval pipeline. As pointed out by de Quervain, et al . 57 , glucocorticoids administered post-retrieval have a temporary effect on delayed recall, indicating that stress at this time may affect memory extinction processes, which are subject to spontaneous recovery, rather than reconsolidation. The findings from Schwabe and Wolf 97 may reflect extinction processes rather than or in addition to the effects of reconsolidation. Testing this hypothesis is another important line of further research.

In conclusion, our results provide new insights for how stress as a retrieval characteristic can alter specific aspects (i.e., stages) of recovering already consolidated autobiographical memories. Theoretically, these findings add an important piece to the puzzle of how memory mechanisms are affected by stress. Practically, these results have potential clinical implications for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, who are affected by recalling traumatic or emotional memories. Our findings shed light on how traumatic memories can be strengthened (i.e., when they are retrieved in stressful contexts) and thus suggest that efforts should be made to prevent individuals from these groups from retrieving emotionally disturbing memories in stressful environments .

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by an NSERC Discovery grant awarded to SS (#RGPIN-04241). There are no financial or other interests to declare.

Author Contributions

S.S. developed the study concept and study design with input from authors. S.C. performed data collection under the supervision of J.P.N. and assisted S.S. with statistical analyses. J.P.N. analyzed the stress biomarker data. S.S. drafted the manuscript, and J.P.N., J.A.B. and J.C.P. provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Book cover

The Psychology of Autobiographical Memory pp 17–92 Cite as

A “Brief” History of the Psychology of Autobiographical Memory

  • Igor Sotgiu 2  
  • First Online: 13 April 2021

480 Accesses

1 Altmetric

This chapter describes the genesis and historical development of the psychology of autobiographical memory. First of all, the author presents the pioneering contributions made by Francis Galton, Victor and Catherine Henri, and Sigmund Freud before examining the contributions made by the main psychology schools which succeeded one another in the period from 1879—generally considered to be scientific psychology’s date of birth—to the first half of the 1970s. The rest of the chapter focuses on the contribution to the psychology of autobiographical memory made by one of Cognitivism’s primary exponents—i.e. Ulric Neisser—and the main theoretical models and research areas characterising the debate on autobiographical memory in the contemporary era.

  • Autobiographical memory
  • Cognitivism
  • Ecological approach to human cognition
  • Francis Galton
  • History of psychology
  • Sigmund Freud
  • Ulric Neisser
  • Victor Henri

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The term eugenics (from the Greek eugenes , literally “well-born” and thus being born with good qualities) was coined by Galton himself. For Galton, eugenics was to have been a branch of science free from any sort of political or cultural conditioning and entirely focused on the objective of improving the human condition as far as possible. In an article published in the journal Nature ( 1904 ), Galton threw light on his perspective on eugenics in this way: “Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve and develop the inborn qualities of a race. But what is meant by improvement? We must leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion on account of the most almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. The essentials of eugenics may, however, be easily defined. All would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be” (p. 82). Unfortunately, with the advent of Nazism and other twentieth-century totalitarian ideologies, Galton’s progressive messages were tragically distorted and eugenics was used to justify some of humanity’s worst crimes.

In Galton’s writings, the expressions “mental association” and “idea” are used interchangeably.

With this expression, Galton meant mental images of a visual type only.

It is important to underline that, in contrast to the cue word technique experiment, this investigation focused exclusively on memories we might call “recent”. The study participants were, in fact, invited to think of their breakfast that same day and thus they were asked to recall a mundane personal episode that occurred just a few hours before they filled in the questionnaire.

In this respect, it should be remembered that Galton always argued forcefully for the need for psychology to equip itself with methodologies designed to generate quantitative descriptions of mental phenomena. Psychometry is the word which Galton ( 1879b ) coined to describe this theoretical and methodological orientation, which he defined as “the art of imposing measurement and number upon operations of the mind” (p. 149).

For Freud ( 1905 / 1953b ), this amnesia period continues “up to their sixth or eighth year” (p. 174).

Freud is explicit regarding his doubts on the use of surveys as a childhood memory enquiry method in chapter four of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (see Freud, 1901 / 1960 , p. 46). It is worth remembering that the Henris themselves were well aware of the limitations inherent to the survey method. In the conclusion to their article, they note: “One must not expect to obtain a complete solution to a question in a survey—rather, it makes it possible to indicate the areas that must be studied. A survey always remains superficial, it does not say why [emphasis added] things are the way they are” (Nicolas et al., 2013 , p. 374).

In contemporary literature, these two very different forms of memory experiences are referred to as first - person memories and third - person memories , respectively (see Cohen & Gunz, 2002 ; Rice & Rubin, 2009 ). Other expressions used with a certain frequency to describe these same experiences are field memories and observer memories (Nigro & Neisser, 1983 ; Robinson & Swanson, 1993 ).

It was Titchener who first coined the expression structural psychology in an article published in 1898 in the Philosophical Review journal. For more on the relationship between Titchener’s approach and that of Wundt, see Schultz and Schultz ( 2011 ).

Careful readers will not have missed the similarity between this example and the observations made by the Henris in the context of their childhood memory survey (see Nicolas et al., 2013 , p. 369; see Sect.  2.1.2 of the current volume). While Wundt makes no reference to these observations (apparently unsurprising, as the Henris’ article came out in 1897, a year later, that is, than Grundriss der Psychologie ), it is extremely likely that he had had access to at least part of the data supplied by the French couple. My reason for formulating this hypothesis relates to a detail in Victor Henri’s scientific biography which I have not mentioned but will comment on here. From October 1894 to March 1896, Victor Henri spent a period of study at the Leipzig Experimental Psychology Laboratory, working under Wundt’s direct supervision. As Serge Nicolas has noted ( 1994 ; see also Nicolas et al., 2013 ), it was during this period that Victor Henri decided to undertake his survey on early childhood memories with his wife. Further proof of this lies in the fact that the questionnaire used for this research was published in the early months of 1895 in a grand total of three journals ( L’Annéé Psychologique , Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger , Psychological Review ) and that in each of these the list of questions was followed by an invitation to readers—formulated by Henri himself—to send in answers by post, directly to Leipzig, where he then lived (see Henri, 1895a , 1895b , 1895c ). Returning to the relationship between the Henris and Wundt, we thus have a valid reason to believe that Wundt could not have been unaware of the results, however preliminary, of research which was conceived and carried out precisely by one of the young scholars who regularly attended his laboratory.

The most important research carried out in this period includes the following: Sperling’s ( 1960 ) experiments on iconic memory; Brown and McNeill’s ( 1966 ) study on the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon; Atkinson and Shiffrin’s ( 1968 ) theoretical model dividing up the memory into three subsystems (sensory register, short-term store, long-term store); research into semantic networks by Collins and Quillian ( 1969 ); and, lastly, Baddeley and Warrington’s ( 1970 ) study into the distinction between short- and long-term memory in amnesia patients.

The essay was part of an essay collection edited by Tulving himself together with his colleague Wayne Donaldson, entitled Organization of Memory (Tulving & Donaldson, 1972 ).

Tulving ( 1985 , 2002 ) used the term autonoetic consciousness to indicate this component of episodic remembering.

In an autobiographical essay published five years before his death, Neisser ( 2007 ) felt the need to clarify that in historical terms according to him the status of founder of the cognitive movement was incorrect: “I was not really the father of cognitive psychology, only the godfather who gave it a name. The name itself was not even very original, given that the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies was already functioning” (p. 297).

Neisser’s presentation— Memory: What Are the Important Questions? —was first published in the volume Practical Aspects of Memory (Gruneberg et al., 1978 ) which comprised the Cardiff conference proceedings. A few years later, this same text was reprinted in a volume edited by Neisser ( 1982 )— Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts —a collection of research articles and theoretical essays written by the scholars who had contributed significantly to the emergence and affirmation of the ecological approach to the study of memory.

This specific memory contents category is frequently called personal semantic memories (see Kopelman et al., 1989 ).

This system’s task is to transfer autobiographical information from the short-term to the long-term memory (Rubin, 2012 , p. 14).

The functions of this system, entirely similar to those performed by the working memory system, comprise identifying and temporarily retaining information making up episodic autobiographical memories (Rubin, 2006, p. 284).

Very recently, Rubin ( 2019 ) has proposed combining the basic systems model with a broad theoretical approach applying to memory in general which he called the dimensional model . This new integrated theory’s main contribution consists in finding a clear location for autobiographical memory within the wide realm of memory phenomena. Indeed, Rubin holds that three fundamental properties distinguish autobiographical memory from other kinds of memory: (1) it is a self-referential mental activity, (2) it involves an ability to mentally construct scenes (which, in turn, enables a sense of reliving), and (3) it is an explicit form of remembering.

For more on Conway’s hypotheses on the specific cognitive structures which form the autobiographical memory knowledge base, see Sect. 3.1 of Chapter 3 .

Most recent research indicates that this ability emerges at 2–3 years of age (see Fivush et al., 2011 ).

Those taking part can express judgements of a quantitative type on the phenomenological features of their recollections: for example, pressing a button to answer questions such as “On a scale from 0 to 10 how vivid is your recollection? ”

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Sotgiu, I. (2021). A “Brief” History of the Psychology of Autobiographical Memory. In: The Psychology of Autobiographical Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69571-2_2

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Psychosocial stages and the accessibility of autobiographical memories across the life cycle

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  • 1 Department of Psychology, University of Durham, England. [email protected]
  • PMID: 15102035
  • DOI: 10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00269.x

Older adults recalled memories from each decade of life. Memories were classified in terms of the psychosocial stages to which their content corresponded. For the majority of memories it was found that age at encoding corresponded to when specific psychosocial stages would have been most likely to have occurred. In a second experiment older adults recalled memories to cues drawn from psychosocial stages and the same pattern of findings was observed. These findings demonstrate that the goals of the self play a major role in both the encoding and accessibility of autobiographical memories, and they also provide support for Erikson's psychosocial theory of development (1950, 1997).

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Autobiographical Psychosocial History

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9 Psychology Final Assignment

The concepts studied in this Psychology class have made me think of many things that have affected my life. I was really interested in the information on memory. I took the memory style test and definitely determined that I am a visual learner. In the past when I heard this, I thought it meant people had to have pictures in order to learn material. I discovered that I do things that put me into this category. I write out notes when I need to learn something, I use highlighting, and now I know that some of the other techniques that make learning easier for a visual learner. I also found it very helpful when reading the tips for improving your memory. I thought the key word technique was amazing. It was given as a way to learn a foreign language, but I could see how it could be helpful in most any subject. I also thought the “less is more” advice on taking notes was interesting. It encourages you to listen and comprehend the lesson and more or less just jot down the main points.

The next concept that I really enjoyed was the information on meditation. In the past, I always associated meditation with flower children or monks sitting around chanting. I had never attempted any of the relaxation techniques that are suggested with meditation. I had never thought of yoga as a form of meditation either. The readings in the book made me look at meditation in a new light. The studies done on the brain really showed a difference in the people that did practice meditation regularly. I especially liked reading about the different forms of meditation while doing the meditation worksheet. I found many ideas that I have tried since then to help me relax when I am really feeling stressed.

The concept of parenting is important for any young adult that anticipates having a family in the future. As I was growing up, I feel like my parents went through many of the stages based on what was happening in their own lives. When I was very young, I think that I lived in a authoritarian house. There were rules, rules, rules. I did not really realize that I had complete structure every day until changes in our household made changes in the parenting style. Now, I lived in a permissive home. I was in junior high and it was really confusing when I was not getting instructions on everything that I was doing. Of course, I took advantage of that after a while. Thank goodness, this seemed to wake my mother up and she turned into more of an authoritative parent by the time I was entering high school. I really believe I would have had a terrible time in high school if she had not made that change. I realized that all the stages were happening, but it was really interesting to read that they all had a name and characteristics that went with them. I hope to be an authoritative parent from the beginning of my future children’s lives.

One of the most important concepts that people

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Autobiographical Psychosocial History

Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History

Review the concepts covered in this course by looking back over the weekly readings, Powerpoint presentations and assignments.

Choose five concepts from any of those covered in this course

Write a paper of 6-8 pages in which you explain how your five chosen concepts apply to or affected your development in life.

For example , you might choose the concept of parenting styles and describe how your parents’ parenting style affected you, or you could choose to describe how you parent your own children.

Requirements: Please print a copy.

· 6 – 8 double spaced pages

· Clearly and concisely covers your topic. Do not fill space with unnecessary words; I would rather you not meet the length requirement than have you fill space with flowery language.

· You must use correct grammar and spelling. Points will be deducted for spelling and grammar errors.

· Use references that support your topic. You may use this course’s textbook as a reference for this paper. You may also use web addresses (again no Wikipedia or other Wikis), journals, other textbooks, popular magazines, etc. Full Credit is given for APA style.  Be sure that you use at least one book or journal article from the SPCC Library .

· Read  http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/apa.html

·  http://apastyle.apa.org/

· Any reference you use must support or disagree with your ideas, not the other way around. I want to know what you think, not what some “expert” thinks.

· Be very careful not to plagiarize; if you use someone else’s ideas you must give them credit. Changing one or two or 10 or 50 words of someone else’s ideas, does not make that thought your intellectual property. If you use someone else’s work, give them credit. I will fail a paper that has been plagiarized.

For example, you might choose the concept of parenting styles and describe how your parents’ parenting style affected you, or you could choose to describe how you parent your own children.

· Use references that support your topic. You may use this course’s textbook as a reference for this paper. You may also use web addresses (again no Wikipedia or other Wikis), journals, other textbooks, popular magazines, etc. Full Credit is given for APA style. Be sure that you use at least one book or journal article from the SPCC Library.

· Read http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/apa.html

· http://apastyle.apa.org/

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  1. Psychology 150 Final Paper.docx

    Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History Review the concepts covered in this course by looking back over the weekly readings, Powerpoint presentations and assignments.

  2. Psychology Final Paper.docx

    1/19/2018 100% (10) View full document Students also studied Autobiographical Psychosocial History.docx Anson Co. Early College High PSY 150 raynal coxe final psy paper (3) (2).docx South Piedmont Community College PSY 150 Sample Autobiographical Psychosocial History Paper.pdf South Piedmont Community College PSYCHOLOGY 150 test 3 (2).docx

  3. Psychology 150 Final Paper 5 .docx

    Psychology 150 Final Paper 5 .docx - Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History Review the concepts covered in this course by | Course Hero Psychology 150 Final Paper 5 .docx - Psychology 150 Final... Doc Preview Pages 1 Total views 33 South Piedmont Community College PSY PSY 150 Ceee06 5/5/2021 View full document

  4. Psychology 150 Final Exam Flashcards

    Terms in this set (150) The two disciplines from which psychology developed were. philosophy and physiology. The person responsible for establishing psychology as an independent discipline with its own subject matter is. Wilhelm Wundt. In a discussion with your professor she tells you that she believes that the focus of psychological study ...

  5. Psychology 150 Final Exam Flashcards

    any severe mental disorder in which contact with reality is lost or highly distorted. Dissociative identity disorder. A disorder characterized by the presence of 2 or 3 more distinct personality states. Schizophrenia. Late onset- A disorder that affects a person's ability to think, feel, and behave clearly.

  6. PSY 150 Final Exam Review Flashcards

    1: Alarm Reaction--temporary state of shock. Resistance to illness & stress fall below normal level. 2: State of Resistance--If stressor remains, the body tries to endure the stressor. Diseases occur (asthma, ulcers, high BP) 3: Stage of Exhaustion--Long term exposure to stress. Collapse or death can occur.

  7. The dynamic interplay between acute psychosocial stress, emotion and

    The fact that autobiographical memory retrieval involves many different stages of retrieval 78 may be a reason for these mixed findings 6. To address this issue, our study characterized how acute psychosocial stress affected different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval: accessing, recollecting, and reconsolidating a remembered experience.

  8. Topic: autobiographical psychosocial history

    Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History. Review the concepts covered in this course by looking back over the weekly readings, Powerpoint presentations and assignments. Choose five concepts from any of those covered in this course

  9. SOLUTION: Autobiographical psychosocial history

    This paper will be discussing five concepts that have been discussed in the overall portions of this class. The way that these concepts have affected ... Post a Question. Provide details on what you need help with along with a budget and time limit. Questions are posted anonymously and can be made 100% private.

  10. Final Paper.docx

    4/29/2021 View full document Students also studied Sample Autobiographical Psychosocial History Paper.pdf South Piedmont Community College PSYCHOLOGY 150 6645 midterm 3.docx Solutions Available College of San Mateo NURS 4001 Psychology 150 Final Paper (5).docx South Piedmont Community College PSY 150 psy331week5quiz.docx Solutions Available

  11. A "Brief" History of the Psychology of Autobiographical Memory

    This chapter has been divided up into four principal sections. Section 2.1 considers the pioneering contributions of four scholars—Francis Galton, Victor and Catherine Henri, Sigmund Freud—whose theories and research can be located in what I referred to as the first phase of the history of the psychology of autobiographical memory above. . Subsequently, Sect. 2.2 seeks to retrace the ...

  12. Psychosocial stages and the accessibility of autobiographical ...

    15102035 DOI: 10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00269.x Abstract Older adults recalled memories from each decade of life. Memories were classified in terms of the psychosocial stages to which their content corresponded.

  13. A history of psychology in autobiography, Vol. IX.

    Abstract. The autobiographies in this volume, and in the series as a whole, can be used to illuminate the history of different areas of psychology. No story is more often told in the history of psychology than the shift from behaviorism to cognitive psychology and to social cognitive approaches. This is a story told both within personality and ...

  14. Psychology 150 Final Flashcards

    Theory that proposes seven different components of intelligence: (1) Language ability, (2) logical-mathematical thinking, (3) spatial thinking, (4) musical thinking, (5) bodily kinesthetic thinking, (6) interpersonal thinking, (7) intrapersonal thinking. The ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas ...

  15. Autobiographical Memory

    Autobiographical memory is the basis for most psychotherapies, an important repository of legal, historical, and literary information, and, in some views, the source of the concept of self. When it fails, it is the focus of serious complaints in many neurological disorders. Introductory chapters place the study of autobiographical memory in its ...

  16. Psychology Final paper.pdf

    Psychology Final paper.pdf - Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History Psychology the study of the mind and behavior of humans | Course Hero Psychology Final paper.pdf - Psychology 150 Final Paper:... Doc Preview Pages 7 South Piedmont Community College PSY PSY 150 BailiffKouprey5373 12/9/2023 View full document

  17. Autobiographical Psychosocial History

    Page 1 of 4 9 Psychology Final Assignment The concepts studied in this Psychology class have made me think of many things that have affected my life. I was really interested in the information on memory. I took the memory style test and definitely determined that I am a visual learner.

  18. Topic: autobiographical psychosocial history

    Type of service. Academic paper writing. Type of assignment. Term Paper. Subject. Psychology. Pages / words. 6 / 1650. Academic level. Sophomore (College 2nd year)

  19. Autobiographical Psychosocial History

    Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History Review the concepts covered in this course by looking back over the weekly readings, Powerpoint presentations and assignments. Choose five concepts from any of those covered in this course Write a paper of 6-8 pages in which you explain how your five chosen concepts apply to or […]

  20. Psychology 150 Term Paper 3 .docx

    Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History Review the concepts covered in this course by looking back over the weekly readings, Powerpoint presentations and assignments. Choose five concepts from any of those covered in this course.

  21. Autobiographical Psychosocial History

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  22. PSY 201 Week 9 Autobiographical Psychosocial History Essay

    PSY 201 Week 9 Autobiographical Psychosocial History Essay. Autobiographical Psychosocial History Essay. Psychology 201. The five concepts that I have chosen to discuss throughout my paper are: meditation, motivation, information processing, coping with stress, and parenting styles.

  23. Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History

    Psychology 150 Final Paper: Autobiographical Psychosocial History... Social Science • Psychology Related Answered Questions Q Complete the following chart using the Divisions section on the American Psychological Association website: www.apa.org. Answered over 90d ago Q Assignment #3 - Write a single-spaced one-page summary for Chapter 3.