Sampling the process of autobiographical memory construction

In three autobiographical memory retrieval experiments participants reporte d the contents of consciousness to a probe presented at early and late poin ts during retrieval. Classification of the protocols according to the speci ficity of the reported knowledge found that early in retrieval abstract kno wledge predominated whereas at the later point, close to generation or form ation of a memory, knowledge related to specific events was more frequent. For some memories very fast and full retrieval was observed at the early po int and this was independent of other concurrent processing demands. These findings show that generative retrieval entails iterative access of autobio graphical knowledge but this is not observed in direct retrieval.