The Role Of Visual Exerience In Autobiographical Memory:Research On Blind, Deaf And Normal Children

Autobiographical memory (AM) is the memory of the past life experiences, which comprised of verbal or written recollection, intensive emotions and mental images from various sensory. There are a large number of studies have shown that the visual imagery plays a very important role of the autobiographical memory. Rich visual imagery can improve the accuracy and vivid of the recollection, lack of visual information is not conducive to the encoding and retrieval of autobiographical memory, even lead to amnesia of episodic memories in the extreme. Previous studies almost for the normal human subjects, special visual experience people were neglected, It was unfavorable to inspect the characteristics of the special group’s autobiographical memory, and is not conducive to reveal the role of visual information in autobiographical memory.Blind and deaf children have developed special visual experience due to visually and auditory impaired. Blind children’ visual imagery has been greatly affected since lack of visual experience, and the time and degree of blindness will also affect the scope and extent of perception, so visual representation of the different types of blind children vary considerably. In contrast, deaf children increased reliance on visual in cases of hearing loss, and the visual experience is richer than the normal children.To explore the role of visual experience in autobiographical memory, we attempted chosen the blind and deaf children on behalf of visual experience impaired group and visual experience advantage group respectively, and compared with normal children. All subjects need to recall four autobiographical memories in different stages of lifetime by oral or written, and the completion of the autobiographical memory questionnaire. Through the analysis and comparison of the different visual experience children’s autobiographical memory questionnaire score, the results are as follows:1, Children of different visual experience have showed obvious disparity in each dimensions of autobiographical memory, especially in the memory components and recalled experience factor.(1) For the normal children, the visual component significantly more than the auditory component, more visual image and rich emotional experience will come to mind, Confidence in authenticity and accuracy of the memories, prefer to use the field perspective;(2) Visually experience impaired children have poor visual memory, accompanied with the calm emotional experience, prefer to observer perspective, did not showed advantage in auditory memory than sighted children. And there is no difference in the judgment of both the authenticity and accuracy of memory;(3) Visual experience advantage children have showed significant advantage of the visual memory, especially the memory of the space environment is significantly better than the normal children, more episodes elements in autobiographical memory, recalls accompanied with rich emotional experience, Significant field perspective preference, memories frequency is higher than the normal children.2, Visual experience normal children recalled the recent events better than distant events, showed a significant time effect of autobiographical memory, and the special children’s emotional experience and memory attributes almost not affected by the time of the incident. But there are significant differences between the children of visual experience impaired and visual experience advantage:the visual memory component and emotion of each period autobiographical memory was very poor in the former group; however, deaf children’memory were very firmly, specifically visual information and emotional experience are not reduced as time goes, showed superior memory retention ability.3There is obvious disparity between normal and special visual experiences children’s earliest memories. The profoundly visually impaired children show obvious defects in memory content and emotional experience, whereas Visual experience advantage children have better recall than normal children. The most noteworthy is special children’s childhood amnesia lasted longer than normal children.This research has revealed the characteristics of the different visual experience children’s autobiographical memory, proved the important role of the visual experience in autobiographical memory.