Abstract. It has been widely acknowledged in the areas of human memory and cognition that behaviour and emotion are essentially grounded by autobiographic knowledge. In this paper we propose an overall framework of human autobiographic memory for modelling believable virtual characters in narrative story-telling systems and role-playing computer games. We first lay out the background research of autobiographic memory in Psychology, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. Our autobiographic agent framework is then detailed with features supporting other cognitive processes which have been extensively modelled in the design of believable virtual characters (e.g. goal structure, emotion, attention, memory schema and reactive behaviour-based control at a lower level). Finally we list directions for future research at the end of the paper.

This paper is about the evolution of a system prototype called Pensieve whose goal is to support people’s reminiscing practices. A number of technologies exist to manage memory-related content; however, these technologies tend to take a model of memory as information that leads to a focus on capture and access. Pensieve is instead based on reusing memory-laden content people already create in social media services. This idea is supported by theories of autobiographical memory, insights from interviews with eight subjects, and experiences with two prototypes deployed to ten users. These interviews and experiences suggest that people value even simple tools that support reminiscence, as well as providing both design goals and research questions around the design of tools that support people in reminiscing.

Lifelogging technologies can capture both mundane and important experiences in our daily lives, resulting in a rich record of the places we visit and the things we see. This study moves beyond technology demonstrations, in aiming to better understand how and why different types of Lifelogs aid memory. Previous work has demonstrated that Lifelogs can aid recall, but that they do many other things too. They can help us look back at the past in new ways, or to reconstruct what we did in our lives, even if we don’t recall exact details. Here we extend the notion of Lifelogging to include locational information. We augment streams of Lifelog images with geographic data to examine how different types of data (visual or locational) might affect memory. Our results show that visual cues promote detailed memories (akin to recollection). In contrast locational information supports inferential processes – allowing participants to reconstruct habits in their behaviour. Author Keywords Lifelogging, memory, remembering, SenseCam, GPS, geovisual

Abstract — This work proposes an initial memory model for a long-term artificial companion, which migrates among virtual and robot platforms based on the context of interactions with the human user. This memory model enables the companion to remember events that are relevant or significant to itself or to the user. For other events which are either ethically sensitive or with a lower long-term value, the memory model supports forgetting through the processes of generalisation and memory restructuring. The proposed memory model draws inspiration from the human short-term and long-term memories. The short-term memory will support companions in focusing on the stimuli that are relevant to their current active goals within the environment. The long-term memory will contain episodic events that are chronologically sequenced and derived from the companion’s interaction history both with the environment and the user. There are two key questions that we try to address in this work: 1) What information should the companion remember in order to generate appropriate behaviours and thus smooth the interaction with the user? And, 2) What are the relevant aspects to take into consideration during the design of memory for a companion that can have different types of virtual and physical bodies? Finally, we show an implementation plan of the memory model, focusing on issues of information grounding, activation and sensing based on specific hardware platforms. I.

This paper discusses the design and use of Pensieve, a system that prompts people to reminisce through emails containing either social media content or text prompts about common life situations. We discuss how existing research on reminiscence informed design goals and tradeoffs in the creation of Pensieve, then analyze data collected from 72 people’s use of the system over four months. We find that people valued the spontaneous reminders to reminisce and the ability to write responses to these prompts; based on their responses, we find that shorter, more general prompts are better and that personalized pictures draw more responses, but less thoughtful ones, than the text prompts. We conclude with a number of design ideas for both researchers and designers at the intersection of technology and reminiscence.

We present iScale, a survey tool for the retrospective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. iScale employs sketching in imposing a process in the reconstruction of one’s experiences with the aim to minimize retrospection bias. Two versions, the Constructive and the Value-Account iScale, were motivated by two distinct theories on how people reconstruct emotional experiences from memory. These two versions were tested in two separate studies. Study 1 aimed at providing qualitative insight into the use of iScale and compared its performance to that of free-hand sketching. Study 2 compared the two versions of iScale to free recall, a control condition that does not influence the reconstruction process. Significant differences between iScale and free recall were found. Overall, iScale resulted in an increase in the amount, the richness, and the test-retest reliability of recalled information. These results provide support for the viability of retrospective techniques as a cost-effective alternative to longitudinal studies. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation/methodology Additional Key Words and Phrases: User experience evaluation, retrospective elicitation, longitudinal methods A video demonstration of the tool may be found at

as tangible shortcuts to multimedia information

Reminiscing is a valuable activity that people of all ages spontaneously and informally partake in as part of their everyday lives. This paper discusses the design and use of Pensieve, a system that supports everyday reminiscence by emailing memory triggers to people that contain either social media content they previously created on third-party websites or text prompts about common life experiences. We discuss how the literature on reminiscence informed Pensieve’s design, then analyze data from 91 users over five months. We find that people value spontaneous reminders to reminisce as well as the ability to write about their reminiscing. Shorter, more general triggers draw more responses, as do triggers containing people’s own photos— although responses to photos tended to contain more metadata elements than storytelling elements. We compare these results to data from a second, Pensieve-like system developed for Facebook, and suggest a number of important aspects to consider for both designers and researchers around technology and reminiscence. Author Keywords Reminiscence, episodic memory, autobiographical memory,

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Prof. Dr. Josef KesslerTo AnnaBecause memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality – call it alternate reality – to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side? Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun translated by Philip Gabriel (Vintage, London) Acknowledgements I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the confiding and unhesitant cooperation of the participating patients and their relatives and friends. This work would have failed without their loyal collaboration during and far beyond the test sessions, and neuroscientific patient work