Brown, N. R., & Schopflocher, D. (1998). Event clusters: An organization of personal events in autobiographical memory. Psychological Science, 9, 470-475.

III. Overview:

Autobiographical memory is our memory for the personal events that happen in our lives. We use these memories to construct reasonable and coherent images of who we are and how we may have become that way. This study examined how such memories may be organized. More specifically, Brown and Schopflocher sought to determine whether autobiographical memories are organized in event clusters, that is, memory structures that organize relevant information according to causally and thematically related events in life.

IV. General Method:

The primary methodological feature of this study was its use of event cueing, a procedure used to uncover the common relationships among memories of events. More specifically, event cueing involves using a subject generated statement about an event that occurred in his or her life to call forth other, related memories. An important assumption of this method is that cued events are likely to be selected from the same event cluster as cueing events (p. 471). Subjects were first given several minutes to think about important events that they had experienced. Next, subjects performed 5 tasks: (1) described 14 important personal events, (2) used the recall of these personal events as cues for recalling other, related events, (3) used a cueing event and a cued event it elicited to answer several questions regarding the relationship between the 2 events, (4) estimated the day, month, and year when the recalled events took place, and (5) rated the importance of the events on a scale ranging from not important at all to extremely important. A control group of subjects were treated similarly, except that they were given word cues.

V. Conclusions and Implications:

Norman and Schopflocher's data suggested that important and memorable autobiographical events are located in event clusters that are "causally related, temporally proximate, and similar in content" (p. 474). In addition, not only does the event cueing method appear useful in examining autobiographical memories, it also hints that an effective model of autobiographical memory must include explanations for how event clusters are linked to one another, what causes these links to form, and how future salient personal events affect them.