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Fluidity in autobiographical memories: Relationship memories sampled on two occasions

We investigated consistency of relationship memories. College undergraduates described five events (first meeting, first date, first fight, most embarrassing event, and favourite memory) from their current relationship or, if not currently dating, most recent relationship. Three months later, they were asked to describe the same events again. We scored the consistency of these narratives at three levels of analysis: event, basic information and propositions. The participants demonstrated low consistency in their descriptions, particularly at more detailed levels of analysis. Consistency depended somewhat on the events being recalled, with participants being more consistent for commonly retrieved relationship memories such as first dates. We also found that those individuals who continued in a relationship were less consistent than those describing a previous relationship. These still dating couples had increased opportunities to narrate event stories together and to update knowledge about the relationship through new episodes. In this fashion, updating of experiences may have led to more inconsistencies in recall over time. When considered with research on flashbulb memories, our findings indicate that updating and revisions may be general features of autobiographical memory.