Understanding Autobiographical Memory: Theories and Approaches

The field of autobiographical memory has made dramatic advances since the first collection of papers in the area was published in 1986. Now, over 25 years on, this book reviews and integrates the many theories, perspectives, and approaches that have evolved over the last decades. A truly eminent collection of editors and contributors appraise the basic neural systems of autobiographical memory; its underlying cognitive structures and retrieval processes; how it develops in infancy and childhood, and then breaks down in aging; its social and cultural aspects; and its relation to personality and the self. Autobiographical memory has demonstrated a strong ability to establish clear empirical generalizations, and has shown its practical relevance by deepening our understanding of several clinical disorders – as well as the induction of false memories in the legal system. It has also become an important topic for brain studies, and helped to enlarge our general understanding of the brain.

Dorthe Berntsen is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Aarhus where she was awarded a Centre of Excellence grant from the Danish National Research Foundation to establish the Center on Autobiographical Memory Research. She is the author of Involuntary Autobiographical Memories: An Introduction to the Unbidden Past (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

David C. Rubin is Juanita M. Kreps Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University. He is a leading researcher in the field of autobiographical memory and the editor of Remembering our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Autobiographical Memory (Cambridge University Press, 1986) among other books.