My research examines how individuals remember personally-experienced events (i.e., autobiographical memory).
Generally, I am interested in examining the relationship between event features (e.g., emotion, importance) and how those events are remembered later (e.g., how clearly or confidently the event is recalled).
One common area of investigation for me is flashbulb memories, the phenomenon where, despite not experiencing the event directly, many individuals develop long-lasting, extremely vivid, and confidently held memories for personally significant (often, surprising and emotional) public events.
In studying event memories, we often assess the details of the remembered event (i.e., contents of memory), the quality of the memory (i.e., memory phenomenology), the individual’s assessments of the memory (i.e., metamemory judgments), and how memories relate to one another (i.e., memory organization).
Some representative findings from my work include:
- memories for hearing of the September 11th terrorist attacks were no more accurate than memories for other, more ordinary events from the same time period, even though participants were more confident in their memories of the 9/11 attacks
- memory for where you were during the taking of an important group photograph is remarkably resistant to forgetting over multi-year delays, consistent with theories suggesting that an evolutionary precursor to episodic memory is the automatic encoding of where one is in space
- emotional intensity (i.e., how strongly you feel about an experience) is a better predictor of the phenomenology of memories for everyday events than is emotional valence (i.e., whether the event is positive or negative)
- the belief that the event occurred (to you, in the past), the sense of recollection (i.e., re-experiencing the past in the present), and the belief that the details of the event that you are re-experiencing are an accurate reflection of the event itself are all separable components of remembering
- transitional events including material changes often serve as narrative boundaries in our life stories whereas events conceived of as psychological turning points are often more central to one’s identity
I have also published on research methodology within autobiographical memory, on the costs and benefits of episodic memory integration, and other topics as well.
Full references for published work (and pdf versions of most) are available from the Publications drop-down menu above.