Retrieval and phenomenology of autobiographical memories in blind individuals

Abstract

Although visual imagery is argued to be an essential component of autobiographical memory, there have been surprisingly few studies on autobiographical memory processes in blind individuals, who have had no or limited visual input. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how blindness affects retrieval and phenomenology of autobiographical memories. We asked 48 congenital/early blind and 48 sighted participants to recall autobiographical memories in response to six cue words, and to fill out the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire measuring a number of variables including imagery, belief and recollective experience associated with each memory. Blind participants retrieved fewer memories and reported higher auditory imagery at retrieval than sighted participants. Moreover, within the blind group, participants with total blindness reported higher auditory imagery than those with some light perception. Blind participants also assigned higher importance, belief and recollection ratings to their memories than sighted participants. Importantly, these group differences remained the same for recent as well as childhood memories.

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 600 Turkish words from four age groups

“…The Tekcan and Göz norms provide concreteness and imageability ratings as well as association sets for 600 of the words selected from Göz (2003). These norms have been widely used by researchers using Turkish materials (e.g., Booth, 2014;Booth, Mackintosh, Mobini, Oztop, & Nunn, 2014;Ilgaz, Altun, & Aşkar, 2014;Tekcan et al, 2015). In addition to these norms, a few databases are more frequently used in linguistics research, such as the Turkish National Corpus (Aksan et al, 2012) and Turkish Electronic Living Lexicon (Inkelas, Küntay, Orgun, & Sprouse, 2000).…”

Phenomenological Reliving and Visual Imagery During Autobiographical Recall in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…In addition, neuroimaging studies have shown activation of visual brain areas during autobiographical recall (e.g., Viard et al, 2007; for a review, see, Piolino, Desgranges, & Eustache, 2009). Moreover, there is evidence of low autobiographical recall in blind individuals (Tekcan et al, 2014). These findings suggest visual processing as a core component of phenomenological reliving during autobiographical recall.…”

Synaesthesia is linked to more vivid and detailed content of autobiographical memories and less fading of childhood memories

“…earliest childhood memory, very vivid memory). A recent study adopted this approach to examine autobiographical memory qualities of blind participants (Tekcan et al, 2015). To some extent, this is the complementary approach to our own.…”