Remembering experienced and reported events

Abstract

Reported events are distinguished from personally experienced (autobiographical) events by being known from reports provided from some person or agency-for example, news reports. Memory for reported events has usually been ignored theoretically, or classified as 'semantic', though it is clearly concerned with specific, dated episodes. We discuss a number of differences between the information available to specify experienced and reported events, and the possible implications of such differences for remembering the events. A study of retrieval of the two types of events, prompted by cue words, showed that reported events take much longer time to retrieve but are dated as being equally old as experienced events. Effects of using emotion words as cues were similar for the two event types. These results suggest that reported events are forgotten (or become inaccessible) at the same rate as experienced events, but that memories are organized in such a way that reported events often have to be accessed indirectly through memories of associated autobiographical events.People have two different avenues to knowledge about real events in the world around them, their own personal experience and reports they receive from somebody else. We shall call events known in these two ways experienced and reported events, respectively (see Larsen 1983a, in press). Information about both kinds of events may be remembered, of course, but not necessarily in the same way and equally well. It may be expected that different types and amounts of information are available about experienced and reported events and, moreover, that the memories are differently organized and interrelated. The present experiment examines the accessibility of memories of experienced and reported events when retrieval cues are either emotional or non-emotional words. RESEARCH ON MEMORY FOR REPORTED EVENTSAlmost all studies of real event memory have been concerned with experienced events; in particular, personal or autobiographical memories. One reason for this focus may be that to most people autobiographical memory is probably the prototypical kind of

The quantity, not the quality, of affect predicts memory vividness

“…However, this correlational fact by itself tells us little about mechanism . One possibility is that emotions , particularly negative emotions, may trigger a defensive shifting of attention : To protect oneself from the unpleasant impact of an event, one may deliberately focus on unimportant trivia at the event's fringe (see Larsen & Plunkett, 1985). This concept is consistent with the fact that vivid memories are often filled with recalled minutiae (the clothing worn by the participants in the event , attendant sights and smells, etc.).…”

Memory for directly and indirectly experienced events

“…On the other hand, as alluded to earlier, Larsen and his associates (Larsen, 1988a,b;Larsen and Plunkett, 1987) have found that indirectly experienced events are more difficult to remember than are directly experienced events. The richness of perceptual and affective features associated with directly experienced events has been suggested as one reason for such findings (Larsen, 1988a).…”

“…Such factors, however, may have differing impacts upon a witness's recollection of an episode depending on whether the event is experienced 'first-hand' or experienced indirectly. In a similar vein, Larsen (1988a) and Larsen and Plunkett (1987) have argued for distinguishing between experienced and reported events. For example, Larsen and his associates have found that reported events (i.e.…”

Autobiographical Memory and the Validity of Retrospective Reports

“…The Sudman et al chapter adopts a social-cognitive perspective and provides evidence that some of the principles of social memory apply to reporting of proxies' events while others do not. The different factors associated with reporting by respondents and by proxies somewhat parallel the distinction between autobiographical events and events reported in the mass media (see Larsen & Plunkett, 1987, for an interesting discussion of the differences between these types of events).…”

“…Our own behaviors provide a rich set of experiences, including information about what we wanted to do, what we actually did, how we felt while doing it, and so on (Tulving, 1972(Tulving, , 1983. Information needed to answer questions about others may not be available or may be accessed in the context in which respondents learned about the event (Larsen & Plunkett, 1987).…”