Disruptive Individual Experiences Create Lifetime Periods: a Study of Autobiographical Memory in Persons with Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Previous research showed that transitional events causing catastrophic and long-lasting changes in group of people's lives (e.g., wars) create autobiographical periods. We investigated whether spinal cord injury (SCI), an involuntary and externally driven disruptive event at the individual level, would also act as a temporal landmark and spawn personal periods and whether these periods have comparable functions and temporal characteristics as those generated at the group level. Thirteen volunteers with SCI recalled a cue-related autobiographical event for each of 22 cue words. Later, participants thought aloud when dating each event. We used the prevalence of injury-related references as an index of the degree to which spinal cord injury affects people's lives. We found frequent references to injury for the period neighboring injury event. Unexpectedly, we also found that SCI resulted in post-injury decrease in event memory. Results imply that SCI provides a temporal landmark and creates an autobiographical period.

A decline in self-defining memories following a diagnosis of schizophrenia

“…If a diagnosis is perceived as a major life transition, age at diagnosis and its association with memory distributions may not be unique to schizophrenia. For example, a recent study demonstrated a reduction in memories following spinal cord injury [49], which restricts the range and nature of activities individuals can engage in. This suggests that any illness or disability that fundamentally changes life circumstances and/or identity can affect memory distributions.…”

The effects of collective and personal transitions on the organization and contents of autobiographical memory in older Chinese adults

“…In the context of autobiographical memory research, a transition is an event or a set of events that causes a significant and enduring change in the fabric of life-in what people do, where they do it, and with whom (Brown, 2016;Brown, Hansen, Lee, Vanderveen, & Conrad, 2012). Several studies have documented the mnemonic importance of transitions (Bohn & Habermas, 2015;Brown, Schweickart, & Svob, 2016;Enz, Pillemer, & Johnson, 2016;Shi & Brown, 2016;Uzer & Brown, 2015;Zebian & Brown, 2014). In particular, they demonstrated that (a) transitions are often used as temporal landmarks when people attempt to date personal events, and (b) memorable personal events tend to Bpile up^around transitional events.…”

Temporal Landmarks

“…A major life transition (i.e., the birth of a child) might usher in a new subjective stage in life, a new self (i.e., "being a TEMPORAL LANDMARKS 5 parent"). Indeed, major transitions have been shown to be linked to self-concept change (Cantor et al, 1987;Kling, Ryff, & Essex, 1997;Uzer & Brown, 2015). For example, student's description of themselves changed significantly as they transitioned from high school to university (Cantor et al, 1987).…”

“…A person may feel more disconnected from their future self if this self is perceived as falling after a psychologically important event. Anticipated life transitions (e.g., becoming a parent or getting divorced) may be such salient landmarks that they chronically bisect the temporal landscape of one's life, similar to past life transitions (Cantor et al, 1987;Kling et al, 1997;Uzer & Brown, 2015). These events cause real life changes, so a sense of disconnection with selves on the other side of the landmark may be relatively unsurprising and based largely in fact.…”

“…Consequently, these landmarks have the potential to shape responses to events on the temporal horizon, shifting identity and affecting goal pursuit. However, although studies on landmark effects have used a wide variety of experimenter-selected or self-nominated temporal landmarks (Alter & Hershfield, 2014;Cantor et al, 1987;Dai, Milkman, & Riis, 2014Kling, Ryff, & Essex, 1997;Peetz & Wilson, 2012;Tu & Soman, 2014;Uzer & Brown, 2015;Zwartz & Sharman, 2013), temporal landmarks may not all be created equal. It stands to reason that some events loom larger than others.…”