Kodowanie kolejności zdarzeń w pamięci autobiograficznej

Autobiographical memory is a representation of events from one’s personal past. A number of these events is great ant they occur in temporal order. The paper is an attempt to reconstruct psychological mechanisms responsible for ordering these events in memory. Four basic mechanisms of events ordering in autobiographical memory are considered. The first one consists in mechanical remembering of a sequence of events. Probably, it is rarely used, because it requires huge memory resources. The second mechanism refers to various time axes on which events are located. These axes possess units of different sizes. The smaller, unit the greater probability of error in location in time estimation. The third mechanism is based on a hierarchical organization of autobiographical memory – it assumes that information is registered within a hierarchical system. When you step from the general level to the concrete one, you are able to reconstruct a more precise order of events. The idea of the hierarchical organization of autobiographical memory proposed by Conway (1996) is used. The fourth group of mechanisms is based on cause-effect relationships. These events that are recognized as causes are considered as earlier than events considered as effects. An example of such mechanisms is inference based on actor-observer effect. Consequences of sequential ordering of representations in autobiographical memory for personal identity and continuity are finally discussed.