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A digest of memory phenomena for addiction research
Author(s) -
HAMMERSLEY RICHARD
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1994.tb00890.x
Subject(s) - abandonment (legal) , set (abstract data type) , addiction , autobiographical memory , constructive , psychology , cognitive psychology , causality (physics) , episodic memory , interpretation (philosophy) , subject (documents) , memory errors , computer science , social psychology , cognition , recall , process (computing) , physics , quantum mechanics , library science , political science , law , programming language , operating system , neuroscience
The implications for addiction research of recent knowledge about human memory are described. It is important that research using self‐reported data understands the limits of suck data. The nature of human memory and the selective, constructive processes of remembering provide one set of limits. Abandoning retrospective data entirely is not feasible in addiction research, for it would require the abandonment of current and prospective self‐reported data as well, as they are also subject to memory biases. Because of memory distortions, self‐reports, even by rigorous questionnaire, are biased narratives rather than incomplete but otherwise accurate evocations of past events. These limits necessitate caution and humility in the interpretation of findings, and cannot be eliminated by any particular set of research methods. There will never be a philosophers’stone which will convert self‐reported data into absolutely accurate figures of quantity, frequency and timing. Nor is it straightforward to infer social and psychological causality from the organization and timing of events as remembered.