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This study promotes a new interpretation of involuntary autobiographical memories, a phenomenon previously defined as a sign of distress or trauma.
Involuntary memory was identified by the pioneering memoryresearcher Hermann Ebbinghaus more than a century ago, but it wasnot until very recently that cognitive psychologists began to studythis memory phenomenon. This book is the first to examine keytopics and cutting-edge research in involuntary memory. Discusses topics such as involuntary memories in everyday life,across the life-span, and in the laboratory; the special ways inwhich involuntary memories sometimes manifest themselves and anumber of theoretical treatments of the topic. Presents innovative research that not only represents thestarting point of the study of involuntary memory, but also placesit in such broader topics as autobiographical memory, consciousnessand memory, aging and memory, implicit and explicit memory,depression, and psychosis.
Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? It may be surprising that the seemingly straightforward answers "from the mind" or "from the brain" are in fact an incredibly recent understanding of the origins of spontaneous thought. For nearly all of human history, our thoughts - especially the most sudden, insightful, and important - were almost universally ascribed to divine or other external sources. Only in the past few centuries have we truly taken responsibility for their own mental content, and finally localized thought to the central nervous system - laying the foundations for a protoscience of spontaneous thought. But enormous questions still loom: what, exactly, is spontaneous thought? Why does our brain engage in spontaneous forms of thinking, and when is this most likely to occur? And perhaps the question most interesting and accessible from a scientific perspective: how does the brain generate and evaluate its own spontaneous creations? Spontaneous thought includes our daytime fantasies and mind-wandering; the flashes of insight and inspiration familiar to the artist, scientist, and inventor; and the nighttime visions we call dreams. This Handbook brings together views from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, history, education, contemplative traditions, and clinical practice to begin to address the ubiquitous but poorly understood mental phenomena that we collectively call 'spontaneous thought.' In studying such an abstruse and seemingly impractical subject, we should remember that our capacity for spontaneity, originality, and creativity defines us as a species - and as individuals. Spontaneous forms of thought enable us to transcend not only the here and now of perceptual experience, but also the bonds of our deliberately-controlled and goal-directed cognition; they allow the space for us to be other than who we are, and for our minds to think beyond the limitations of our current viewpoints and beliefs.
Our memories, many believe, make us who we are. But most of our experiences have been forgotten, and the memories that remain are often wildly inaccurate. How, then, can memories play this person-making role? The answer lies in a largely unrecognized type of memory: Rilkean memory.
The first volume devoted solely to autobiographical memory retrieval, The Act of Remembering serves as a primer of ideas, methodology, and central topics, and lays the groundwork for future research in the field. Contains new, forward-looking theories from leading international scholars Answers questions such as: Do we retrieve memories according to when and where we need them? How much conscious control do we have over what we remember? Why are some people more likely than others to have intrusive ‘flashbacks’ following a stressful event? Pays particular attention to voluntary and involuntary recall
The first to focus exclusively on implicit memory research, this book documents the proceedings of a meeting held in Perth, Australia where leading researchers in the field exchanged ideas, data, and predictions about theoretical issues. In addition to reporting new information on a variety of topics, integrating previous findings, and proposing new theoretical approaches to implicit memory, the book also contains critical commentaries by highly regarded area specialists.
Why are we sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? This concise overview explores the concept of 'forgetting', and how modern society affects our ability to remember things. It takes ideas from Francis Yates classic work, The Art of Memory, which viewed memory as being dependent on stability, and argues that today's world is full of change, making 'forgetting' characteristic of contemporary society. We live our lives at great speed; cities have become so enormous that they are unmemorable; consumerism has become disconnected from the labour process; urban architecture has a short life-span; and social relationships are less clearly defined - all of which has eroded the foundations on which we build and share our memories. Providing a profound insight into the effects of modern society, this book is a must-read for anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and philosophers, as well as anyone interested in social theory and the contemporary western world.
The goal of the applied memory volume is to highlight many interesting and creative applications of basic memory phenomena that are underrepresented, or even unrepresented, in the literature. Authors were charged with the task of reviewing relevant basic and applied research and offering new empirical investigations into the applications of these benchmark phenomena. To this end, Applied Memory, consists of 17 chapters that explore the influences of generation, irrelevant speech, verbal overshadowing, isolation, part-set cuing, reminiscence, hyperemnesia, placebos, mental state, metamemory knowledge, flashbulb events, and traumatic events on memory in everyday settings, as well as applications of source memory, social memory, involuntary autobiographical memory, dream memory, and strategic memory regulation. The volume is designed as a resource for basic and applied memory researchers and as a supplementary text in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology, human memory, or applied psychology.
