Affiliations: Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity
College, Dublin 2, Ireland | Mercer's Institute for Research on Ageing, St. James's
Hospital, Dublin 8, Ireland
Abstract: There is ongoing theoretical debate regarding episodic memory and
how it can be accurately measured, in particular if the focus should be
content-based recall of episodic details or something more experiential
involving the subjective capacity to mentally travel back in time and
"re-live" aspects of the original event. The autonoetic subscale of the
Episodic Autobiographical Memory Interview (EAMI) is presented here as a new
test instrument that attempts to redress theoretical and methodological
shortcomings in autobiographical memory assessment. The EAMI merges a
phenomenological detail-based approach with an assessment of autonoetic
consciousness, departing considerably from traditional Remember/Know paradigms
used within this field. We present findings from an initial pilot study
investigating the potential markers of autonoetic consciousness that may
accompany episodic retrieval. Key behavioural indices of autonoetic
consciousness, notably those of viewer perspective, visual imagery, and
emotional re-experiencing, emerged as being inextricably bound with the level
of phenomenological detail recalled and the overall re-living judgment. The
autonoetic subscale of the EAMI permits conceptually refined assessment of
episodic personal memories and the accompanying subjective experience of mental
re-living, characteristic of episodic memory.
