Ulric Neisser's contribution to the study of autobiographical memory accuracy

Ulric Neisser was the initiator of the contemporary psychology of autobiographical memory, as well as the founder of the ecological approach to human cognition. The present article reviews his empirical and theoretical contributions to an issue which is at the heart of the contemporary debate on autobiographical memory: that is, autobiographical memory accuracy. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, Neisser empirically investigated this topic in a variety of memory research fields including legal testimony, flashbulb memory, and childhood memory. Overall, the empirical studies that Neisser conducted in these fields led him to conceptualize autobiographical memory as a reconstructive process serving the specific goals pursued by the rememberer at a particular time and place, and dynamically varying according to the social context in which autobiographical experiences are recalled. In the conclusions, the author discusses the influence of Neisser's empirical and theoretical work on autobiographical memory accuracy on the current memory literature.