Direct and generative retrieval of autobiographical memories

In this article, the retrieval of autobiographical memories induced by different cues with varying specificity has been described. Direct retrieval of autobiographical memories was found to be associated with self-generated high specific cues and generative retrieval with low specific word cues. Since self-generated cues contained lifetime period (LTP) knowledge and memory title (MT) they helped to locate a reduced temporal region in which a specific event was directly accessed. In this case, LTP knowledge, as a cue, opened up the shorter time period of a person's past and MT directly activated the target memory. However, low specific word cues generally required longer time to be elaborated into memory descriptions that initiated the recall process within a wider temporal region (usually the whole past) and access knowledge with different specificity, thus resulting in the generative and protracted retrieval of autobiographical memories. It has been proposed that, unlike spontaneous recovery, the generative retrieval of autobiographical memory is controlled by the function of working self that modulate the whole retrieval process.