SenseCam: The Future of Everyday Memory Research?
Guest Editors: Catherine Loveday & Martin A. Conway

This special issue focuses on the use of SenseCam or similar technology. SenseCam is a body-worn camera created and developed at Microsoft Research Laboratories Cambridge, U.K. that takes fish lens colour photographs in response to sensory changes. A typical two-hour event produces 200 to 300 photographs which can later be viewed in a few minutes, producing a SenseCam ‘movie'. The effects on memory can be startlingly detailed recall of ‘forgotten' memories. We have called these Proustian moments. In general SenseCam powerfully boosts remembering for apparently forgotten everyday events over retention intervals of weeks, months, and years. These enhancing effects have been observed in both younger and older adults and in patient groups. It thus, provides a means to investigate memory for naturally occurring experiences across a wide range of people and it also allows a new degree of control over our ability to check the accuracy of what can be recalled of everyday experience.

Our aim is to construct a special issue of 10 to 15 papers, including an overview editorial, that document the new and exciting developments in researching human memory made possible by SenseCam and related technologies.

The deadline for submitting papers to this Special Issue has now closed. 

 

Silence and Memory
Guest Editors: Monisha Pasupathi & Kate McLean

Memory researchers often focus on what is spoken, but silences are also important elements in memory. Recent work suggests that what is not told, not rehearsed, and not spoken has implications for later memory, self, and identity. Moreover, that work further suggests that those implications are evident for both individuals and groups. We are seeking contributions to a special issue of Memory considering the implications of silence for memory.

The special issue will feature a wide range of contributions, ranging from laboratory and experimental work to theoretical considerations, and phenomena ranging from retrieval-induced forgetting to cultural and social factors that influence the nature of silences.