Abstract
In studies of cued recall, responses to photographic stimuli have often been examined in isolation of related photography practices (e.g. taking, organising, or sharing images), and without considering how photographs are used. In contrast, photo-elicitation methods position photographs not simply as cues, but as meaningful artefacts around which accounts of the past are constructed. Drawing on photo-elicitation interviews, I examine cued recall from a distributed cognition perspective, proposing that it consists of varying combinations of several, potentially-distributed processes. First, looking at photographs can catalyse remembering by surfacing relevant ideas, followed by: stimulation (of feelings and emotions), simulation and narrative production, association, inference, and meaning-making. Using examples from my interviews, I consider how each process is socially and materially configured. I then discuss the role of diverse photographic practices in the convergence of these processes, and the implications for conceptions of cueing, recall, and autobiographical memory.
Introduction
Psychological research into photography and memory has focused on effects of using photographs as cues. For example, Loveday and Conway (2011) showed that photos can aid remembering previously forgotten experiences. Koutstaal et al. (1998) showed that reviewing photographs can improve recall of recent, everyday events in older adults. Despite their potential to support recall, photographs are also implicated in constructive processes. Koutstaal et al. (1999) found that, although photographs can increase recall accuracy, they can also shape what is remembered, and can reinforce memory for some events at the expense of others for which photos are not reviewed. Further, photographic details can distort memory through ‘misleading postevent information’ (Koriat et al., 2000). For example, meta-analyses by Deffenbacher et al. (2006) showed that viewing police photographs reduced witnesses’ accuracy in identifying perpetrators from a line-up. Other studies have examined cued recall in relation to phenomenal characteristics, such as confidence, vividness or emotional valence (e.g. French et al., 2006), or brain imaging (e.g. Gilboa et al., 2004). In these studies, responses to a photographic stimulus were examined in isolation of related practices (e.g. the taking, organising, annotating or sharing of photographs), and without considering how photographs were used in memory construction.
Recent research shows that taking photographs can impair recall (Henkel, 2014; Soares and Storm, 2018). While Henkel (2014) attributed this ‘photo-taking-impairment effect’ to ‘cognitive offloading’, Soares and Storm (2018) argued that it is more likely related to differences in paying attention to the photographed scene (see also Barasch et al., 2017, who found that using a camera could improve attention and memory). Henkel and Milliken (2020) also examined photo-editing, finding that different editing practices resulted in different effects on recall. Again, these studies focused on memory output, and photography practices were isolated and scripted.
Literature from media studies and human computer interaction paints a very different picture, where engagement with photographs is complex, diverse, social, and idiosyncratic (see, for example, Chalfen, 1984; Keightley and Pickering, 2014; Slater, 1995; Van House et al., 2005; Whittaker et al., 2010). Here, exposure to a photograph is not an isolated incident, but part of a trajectory of related photographic practices, itself, enmeshed in a wider activity of social and material interactions that shape how we experience and remember life events (Fawns, 2019). Photograph collections are frequently sporadically and inconsistently organised (Frohlich et al., 2002), and there is often a serendipitous element to rediscovering images (Frohlich et al., 2013).
Photo-elicitation methods, common in sociology and anthropology, place photographs, not as separate from what is remembered, but as integral elements of conversations between researchers and participants (Harper, 2002). Photographs do not just aid recall, but prompt rich discussions and interactions (Fawns, 2020). In what follows, I present an analysis of photo-elicitation interviews, in which cued recall is deconstructed into processes that are distributed across brain, body and world (Sutton, 2010). I then discuss how this perspective can illuminate how remembering is partially configured through interactions between cognitive, social and material activity.
Methods
Across two studies, participants navigated familiar spaces (e.g. homes or offices), selecting photographs as stimuli for talking about how photography was involved in remembering actvity. In each study, I asked about participants’ photographic practices, motivations, and what they valued within photographs. We discussed media and technologies, and reflected on general beliefs about memory and photography. Participants from Study 1 were given initials as pseudonyms (e.g. AE, JI, IO), while those from Study 2 were given first names (e.g. Lorraine, Robert, Ingrid).
Study 1 focused on a shared event – a civil partnership wedding in Scotland, chosen because it allowed consideration of differences and similarities in photographic practices around a common set of episodes (e.g. ceremony, speeches, dinner, dancing.). Interviews were conducted a year-and-a-half after the wedding. Six participants provided their collections of wedding photographs and were asked about how they came to have these photographs, what they had done with them, and what it had been like to engage with them through various technologies. Participants included the bridal couple (both women), the official photographer (known to the bridal couple but paid to take high-quality photos), the ‘Best Woman’ and her partner, and another guest who was not part of a couple. This sample provided a variety of perspectives within the wedding, but was homogeneous in gender (all female), age (30–45 years old), and socio-economic status (well-educated, professional).
Study 2 explored photography practices across the lifetimes of 15 unrelated University staff. Participants prepared at least 10 personally-relevant photos across at least two devices. During interviews, they selected additional photographs as I followed them around their home or office. By discussing a range of events, over longer time periods, I could explore connections between each individual’s photography practices. I used deviant and critical case sampling (Marshall, 1996), seeking volunteers with different photographic profiles (e.g. those identifying as taking many or few photographs, or as heavy or light users of technology). I interviewed six lecturers (five female, one male), two researchers (female) and seven information technology professionals (all male). Six were parents, nine lived with a partner. Most were from the United Kingdom (n = 12), with three from elsewhere (North America and Europe).
Interviews lasted 30–60 minutes. In Study 1, two participants (I.O. and Y.S.) were interviewed together for their convenience (implications are considered in the Discussion). Transcripts were analysed using framework analysis (Lacey and Luff, 2007), with an initial framework consisting of practices, motivations, contextual factors, and cueing processes developed from the literature described in the previous section. This paper focuses primarily on cueing processes, although these were shaped by the other categories during analysis. Starting from concepts from memory psychology literature (episodic recall, semantic recall, recognition, and inference), I used Sutton’s (2010) second-wave distributed cognition as a theoretical lens for refining categories to better capture the role of interactions with photography.
Sutton’s framework can also illuminate how people remember together (see, for example, Harris et al., 2011), such as when participants discuss the past with a researcher. Furthermore, Sutton considers material elements, such as cameras, photographs, or albums, as part of the social context. Crucially, external resources are recruited in ways that complement what is already present within a distributed system. Photographs, for example, do not stand in for memory, but are used in combination with internal processes. While Sutton sees external elements as importantly different from internal cognitive resources, the distinction between internal and external is not always clear. For example, external resources can contribute to our thinking even when not physically present. Conversely, thoughts can be externalised, and other people’s memory narratives can serve as our own exograms (Sutton, 2010). The cueing processes presented in the following section were derived from this interdependent combination of established psychological constructs and external interactions.
Distributed processes of cued recall
Beyond looking at photos and articulating memories, participants navigated material and digital interfaces and spaces. There were often multiple photographs visible simultaneously, and conversations flowed around cues and other elements (e.g. computer interfaces, wall displays, shared control of digital albums). Decisions, considered or spontaneous, were taken about which photographs to look at, and unexpected discoveries were made as participants stumbled upon forgotten images.
Participants’ accounts, as they navigated their photograph collections, combined different kinds of information. Consider PJ’s description of a photo of a wedding speech:
I like this photograph – he’s not someone I know terribly well, but I really enjoyed what he said that day and I was glad I had a little snap of him. And, again, the flowers in the foreground there looking very nice gives you some idea of what the occasion is.
In this short narrative, PJ moved from present tense ( ‘he’s not someone I know terribly well’) to past ( ‘I really enjoyed what he said’) and then back to present ( ‘the flowers . . . gives you some idea of what the occasion is’). The middle, set in past tense, implies recall not of what the speaker said, but that he said something she had enjoyed. It is not clear that PJ was ‘reliving’ the experience of hearing him speak, yet details were expressed with certainty, rather than probability. The elements set in present tense provide context (her relationship with the speaker, the aesthetics and general sense of the occasion). PJ’s appreciation of the photograph is entangled in her memory of the speaker and the event. Her account is constructed dynamically, an interplay between photograph and rememberer: the initial sparking of awareness; stimulating emotive connections to the speech; hints of narrative, interspersed with associations; and the potential of the flowers to support inferences. These different constructive aspects are discussed below.
Catalysing
The initial element of cueing was a catalysing of the potential to remember something of the past – an idea, event, or person – through the coming together of participant and photograph or, indeed, other kinds of cues (e.g. albums, displays, artefacts or physical spaces). Dan illustrated this when describing the organisation of old, paper photos into his digital archive:
I don’t actually know what’s in this set, but we can – oh, so these are not going to be organised at all, because these are – I just spent a couple of weeks at some point, stuffing old photographs through – actually I think they were re-photographed rather than scanned.
Dan’s understanding developed as he spoke, from not knowing what was in that folder, to realising that the photographs would be disorganised due to the rapid scanning process, and finally that he did not scan but digitally photograph them. From there, he could articulate the reason: photographing was faster than scanning. In this example, there was a gradual process of realising what had happened, and each realisation provided a spark of ignition for further remembering. At other times, this process was evident only in that the participant started discussing something, related to a photograph, that they had not already been speaking about. Ingrid described how mundane photos could trigger otherwise improbable sequences of remembering.
We came to the pictures of the bread and I was like, oh yeah, there was this piece of bread in the bakery . . . and of course, when you see the picture, it triggers that, whereas the first time we met again, that wasn’t the first thing I told him . . . I don’t know, I probably would have remembered eventually.
It is not surprising that cues reminded participants of past events. However, it is analytically useful to separate the resulting narratives and descriptions from the spark of ignition, after which other processes became possible, motivating chains of remembering activity, as one idea led onto another.
Stimulating
Participants often attributed feelings and emotions to photos. Lorraine described emotional memories as ‘flooding back’, whereas Kate conveyed a slowly progressing immersion, in which emotions had primacy over scenes and narrative details, and emotional connections were associated with ‘reliving’.
What it feels like is happening is that it triggers a cascade of connections particularly between sensory things and emotional things. There always seems to be a similar flow as the memory evolves. So, you know, it starts just by the side of the photo and that hasn’t really triggered anything yet and then very quickly I may remember sounds that were going on, or smells at the time, and suddenly my brain feels quite active with the past as if I’m almost reliving what happened, and that is inevitably connected with emotions.
Distinguishing the stimulation of emotions from the generation of imagery or narrative allows us to see how social context, and affective associations with particular photographs, could shape participants’ remembering behaviour. For Thomas, the environment influenced the capacity of photos to connect him, emotionally, to the past.
I spent a couple of days at the weekend at home. At the end of that, you feel totally different than when you come back to [town], to your flat, and go to work. Looking at photos of when you were a wee boy, when the room was full of smoke, and my papa wouldn’t get out the house without wearing a tie, and a handkerchief in his pocket. These are all memories of a different time . . . I will never know those experiences again, and never feel the kind of emotions I had then. So it gives you a kind of tap into something that was back then.
Practices and contexts contributed to emotional responses, and these, in turn, motivated future practices. Consider JI’s moral objection to a guest posting a photograph of her wedding to Facebook during the event.
It wasn’t hers to put up, on Facebook of all things, where people that weren’t invited – if they were meant to see this photo, they should have been at the wedding.
For JI, this particular cueing context stimulated a negative response that reinforced an aversion to sharing personal experiences on social media. Similarly, Mary kept her ‘more emotional’ photographs private, and some participants had collections of images that they avoided looking at because of an uncomfortable, emotional connection. Participants’ histories of photographic practices, stretching from original event to interview, had implications for the manifestation of emotional connections to the past.
Simulation and narrative
Photos often prompted descriptions of scenes and narrative details pertaining to what happened at a past event. While emotional connections were often evident, these are presented separately to emphasise differences in the contribution of photographs and practices. Conversely, simulated imagery and narrative details are presented together, not because they are part of the same cognitive process, but to recognise the methodological difficulty of separating them. Take AE’s description of the moment she was about to walk down the aisle, after the decision to move the wedding inside due to rain.
We walked into the room, the sun came down into the skylight and I just looked up and was like, ‘Oh, Sod’s law’, you know . . . That was the only half hour of rain for the whole day.
While AE’s comment ‘the sun came down . . . and I just looked up’ sounds like she is recounting vivid episodic details, she may be rehearsing previously recalled semantic details, without accompanying episodic characteristics, imagery, and so on. However, in many cases, such descriptions were augmented by accounts of emotions, feelings, associations, inferences, and personalised meaning. Thus, even well-rehearsed, canonical narratives such as AE’s (a similar narrative was articulated by JI and PJ) were constructive. Further complicating matters, there were some clear indications that participants could remember imagery of experiences they had not lived through. For example, JI claimed to be able to ‘see in her head’ a memory of her parents waltzing, an event that almost certainly happened while she was in another part of the venue.
I am not sure if there is a photo, or if I saw it, or if I was just told it. It is not really important because I can see, in my head, them waltzing . . . I’ve seen them at enough weddings or whatever, I can actually see them. I know what they are wearing on the day and I can see it . . . that one is a warm memory because they were in good form.
It did not matter to JI how she had generated this imagery (in fact, there is a photograph of this scene, and JI may have been influenced by that, alongside conversations with wedding guests). What matters to her is that she can remember it. She describes this memory as ‘warm’, associated with positive emotions. This suggests that emotional connection and, indeed, simulation, were not contingent on episodic recall.
Inference
Participants used photographs to work out what ‘must have happened’, to confirm details, or to make sense of past events. Phrases such as ‘I would have’, ‘I think’, ‘it looks like’, and other suggestions of uncertainty, indicated interpretation and deduction. In inference, participants used different kinds of evidence, including visual content, knowledge of who took a particular photograph, and metadata (e.g. filenames, creation dates). A simple example involved William suggesting that he must have used his camera, rather than his phone, because the phone was visible in the picture. There were more complex forms, such as where PJ combined visual clues with memory of the kinds of dancing that happened at the wedding.
I think they were doing Strip the Willow, eh – The Dashing White Sergeant or something – the formation of the three of them there makes me think that.
In this way, photographs could help to fine-tune memory. For Jane, the wintry appearance, Christmas decorations and particular people in one photograph allowed her to narrow down the occasion of a photographed scene.
I can’t quite remember when that was but I’m seeing it’s winter, it’s Christmas time, my friends were up visiting.
From there, she could recall further, related information and combine this with a deductive process comparing the timings of different events:
What else happened that year, you know, gosh they weren’t married at that point, they only just got engaged, their dog was here . . .
Such information could be used as cues for further recall, as event-specific and contextual information mixed with predictions about things they ‘would have done’. Inference could lead to false assumptions, such as Sophie’s family’s misconception that she was in a romantic relationship with her friend because they were together in numerous photographs. In cases of uncertainty, other photographs could be used as evidence, but unresolved uncertainties were not necessarily a problem – a plausible explanation was sufficient in many cases.
Association
Participants’ accounts often went beyond the photographed event, connecting to other events and ideas. For Mary, a photo of a friend on a remote mountain-top reminded her of occasions with him inside a bar, presenting a stark contrast between what was shown and what was remembered.
That picture immediately brings back the memories of sitting in the little bar just outside that hotel. So there’s a lot in it that’s not in the picture.
As well as supporting connections to other events, photos could summarise time periods or relationships. For example, Lorraine’s hiking photo reminded her of the personality of her guide, rather than of the occasion shown.
This one really, strongly reminds me of [our guide] . . . I was very, very nervous, and he was just so lovely and he would find another way for me . . . he didn’t have a lot of English but he had a great sense of humour, and . . . looking at that picture and seeing him smile, I can remember how kind he was.
For Thomas, a small number of photos represented the decade before he married and settled into family life. Similarly, a formative period was represented for Kate by a group of old, analogue photos:
This is my high school in [foreign city]. This is a really special time in my life . . . I was actually [there] for about six to seven years, most of my teens.
William referred to a photograph as ‘a very general memory in the sense that it’s not that particular day or that particular occasion, but it reminds me of holidays that we spent there’. Another summarised a complex mix of feelings, connected to his daughter’s illness:
I couldn’t tell you the occasion when I took that particular picture. The significance of it for me is that [café] . . . it’s just round from the [Children’s Hospital] . . . I spent quite a bit of time at the [Children’s Hospital].
These examples indicate that photographs did not always function as event-specific. They could facilitate remembering beyond what was shown to more generalised or abstract ideas, time periods or relationships. This could lead to further remembering by supporting connections between ideas and stringing events together.
Meaning making
Participants also generated new meaning around photos. For example, a conversation with her mother had changed Ellen’s memories relating to her graduation photograph. She now saw the photo as evidence of her father’s awkwardness within the formal, academic setting.
It was after my mum speaking about it that made me think about it and helped to reinforce . . . the feeling of awkwardness. I was relatively young, I don’t think I sensed that or was aware of that. And I think the photograph helps to reinforce – it’s kind of evidence for that, if that makes sense.
For Ellen, the photograph was no longer about her graduation, but was now associated with her perception of her father. Through meaning making, participants learned about themselves, others, and the world, in ways that resonated with the past and the present. Nick spoke about using a photograph archive constructed by his father to visualise how his ancestors lived and put his family into ‘perspective and context’. This approach was tied into an overall conception of his photograph collection as a record of experiences that enabled him to see how he and his family had progressed through life:
I see photos as a journey, because life is a journey in general . . . the photos help us take a log of that journey, so we know where we’ve been.
Looking at photographs involved acts of interpretation, in which images, events and associations were made sense of, and imbued with personal relevance and meaning. Thus, ‘cued recall’ was, for my participants, far from a neutral elicitation of the past – memory changed over time, not just through misremembering or contextual dynamics, but, also through active reconfiguration, and the incorporation of new ideas. Ellen’s conversation with her mother shows how photographic ‘evidence’ could be subjectively interpreted, and how sharing photos enabled shared points of reference for generating new meaning, individually and collaboratively, through reflection and discussion about the past.
Cueing as structural; configuring recall
Photographs were implicated in chains of remembering, through raising awareness of aspects of the past, and through supporting association and inference. In the following example, YS moved between different kinds of remembering and different tenses, indicating an interplay between what could be seen in the photo and what was remembered.
You can see already the raindrops actually. Here and there. And that was starting to make people’s decisions. They look like little white dots.
As Mary suggested, recall was produced by the interaction of photographs and memory.
It’s not about looking at the pictures. It’s using that to help us bring back the different things that are hidden away in the back of your head but you don’t remember it without a prompt.
The catalytic process involved the interrelation of memory, photographs, and the environment – a coming-together of person and world. Once a participant started talking about an event, other memory manifested, related to the interactions between participant, researcher and photographs. Yet, for some participants, an awareness of troubling associations with particular photographs led to material configurations, where images were made inaccessible to avoid recalling upsetting events or negative emotions. For example, Ingrid’s war photographs stimulated a ‘shocking’ feeling of associating the young man in military setting with her own grandfather.
When I first saw this little batch of pictures, one of the things that really struck me, even though I did know it before: my grandfather was, what? Seventeen or so when he went to the navy . . . looking at the pictures and seeing just a young guy. He was such a young guy . . . that was so shocking really.
She had locked away these images, only accessing them for the interview. Other participants had actively sought to suppress recall by deleting, hiding, or avoiding troublesome photographs. Kate’s box of pictures had become entangled in emotional resonances, contributing to disorganisation and disengagement.
There was a box of pictures that contains all my 20’s in it somewhere and it’s completely disorganised and, kind of, depressing to look at . . . it was during the time when my dad died, so there’s pictures of him around that time in that box, which is maybe why it never got organised.
Associations with materials and environments could orientate participants to think or feel in particular ways (such as in Thomas’ example, above, of feeling ‘totally different at home’). Photography practices, and their contexts, were crucial within extended chains of remembering, motivating or demotivating future practices. Both AE ( ‘I got a bit photoed-out’) and JI ( ‘I got bored; I mean it’s thousands’) were saturated by photographs of their own wedding. IO put it more strongly, connecting unselective viewing practices with disengagement.
When we were looking through them, it was like, ‘Skip, skip, skip, these are all the same boring crap’.
Contrast these examples with Ingrid’s description of serendipitous browsing.
Sometimes I remember something, like a letter or a newspaper clipping I have somewhere, and I go through the box and look for that thing . . . And then five hours are gone.
Thus, remembering is influenced by the conditions in which cueing takes place, and by previous practices of photography. Beyond what is remembered, photography practices partially configure how it feels to remember. Sutton (2018) draws on Colombetti and Krueger (2015) to argue that social and material elements play a constitutive role in emotion regulation. Like music players, items of clothing, or food and drink, albums and photographs (and, indeed, cameras and phones) are configurable elements of our ‘affective niches’; we produce and organise them, in part, to provide future opportunities to generate particular emotions, states of mind, or feelings. Photography practices could also help participants to work through troublesome associations. In an email exchange following the interview (inserted with permission), Kate explained the cathartic process she had since gone through, organising photographs that stimulated negative emotions into a more coherent collection that supported a holistic sense-making of her life history.
‘I was inspired by our meeting to organise all of my photos into huge chronological albums (including printing pics from Facebook!), which was a massive reflective study in itself. I have a very odd sense of satisfaction about my life that was missing before, or felt chaotic. My past felt chaotic, like the random albums and boxes of loose pictures. All tidy now . . . there is a logical story told in the albums, of an adventurous little girl that grew into a worldly woman. The chaos is gone. Thanks for being a big part of that’.
For her, recall during interview was part of her wider emotional history and, indeed, her future material and conceptual reconfigurations of memory and identity.
Reconsidering cued recall
Studying recall via isolated photography practices can obscure the complexity of relations between photography and remembering, telling us little about memory ‘in the wild’ (Barnier and Hoskins, 2018). Focusing on measurable output (e.g. accuracy, number of details, or characteristics such as ‘vividness’) neglects crucial questions of how cues are connected to a meaning-laden history of related interactions. Where Henkel’s (2014), and Soares and Storm’s (2018) participants showed impaired recall after taking photos but not looking at them, Koutstaal et al’.s (1998) participants were more likely to recognise objects from events for which they had reviewed a photograph, and Koutstaal et al. (1999) showed that reviewing photographs could influence recall for other events for which photographs were not reviewed. Loveday and Conway (2011) showed that, even in the context of amnesia, cues often helped recall of ‘a memory that seemed to be lost’ (p. 697). Barasch et al. (2017) found that, where participants could freely take photographs, using a camera led to better recognition of photographed and non-photographed elements than not using a camera. Other studies have shown that the goals underlying photographic acts can shape not only memory (Soares and Storm, 2021) but the emotional experience of the event itself (Diehl et al., 2016). Thus, recall can be helped and hindered by photography, depending on a range of conditions.
Prominent findings, such as the photo-impairment effect, are based on studying highly-directive acts in specific contexts set by researchers. Henkel’s (2014) and Soares and Storm’s (2018) participants photographed museum objects and computer images, respectively. Koutstaal et al. (1998) showed video recordings of an event that participants had not experienced, then provided photographs of that event. Koutstaal et al. (1999) asked participants to undertake pre-determined activities (e.g. tracing a boomerang) in a laboratory setting, and provided photographs of actors performing those same activities. Loveday and Conway (2011) asked their participant, at the end of each week, to ‘recall as much as possible about the first event of the week’ (p. 699) before looking at a photo from an automatic camera (SenseCam). Henkel and Milliken’s (2020) participants were provided with photos of generalised scenes and asked only to crop or apply a grayscale filter. Rather than being ‘representative’, these are highly-scripted, idiosyncratic practices.
By conceiving of memory as the internalised property of individuals, psychological models neglect processes of co-construction across people, material objects and environments, and the interplay between individual and social remembering. Via a distributed cognition perspective, my analysis presents a more complex view of cued recall, in which photographic practices contributed to extended chains of cueing and remembering, with inference and association also instrumental in linking together different kinds of memory. Further, a photo-elicitation approach allowed me to explore varied and unpredictable trajectories of related practices, events, and associations. Viewing photographs rarely happened in isolation; it was part of other practices that shaped how events were spoken and thought about. The distributed processes I have proposed (catalysing, stimulating, simulation and narrative, inference, association and meaning making) explain the entanglement of cued recall with diverse practices and contexts, and highlight some implications for research.
Conceptions of memory
My aim is not to replace psychological constructs with distributed ones but to support examination of how environmentally situated behaviour changes the operation of these constructs ‘in the wild’. I have avoided terms with connotations of pre-stored or internalised memory to preserve this distinction. For example, catalysing might interact with recognition as the participant recognises the personal relevance of the photo, or with a retrieval orientation towards the general intention to recall something (Rugg, 2000). However, catalysing is distinguished from recognition by its focus on bringing aspects of the past into consciousness, and of initiating a chain of further processes that come together in memory construction. Similarly, while retrieval orientation is suggestive of future remembering, it suggests only the direction (or the kind of cue processing to be done), and not the momentum. Catalysing explains the generative interdependence of functions within the brain and the material interactions that happen outside of it.
In many cases, my participants’ accounts appeared to blend episodic and semantic characteristics, along with inference, association, and meaning-making. Simulation and narrative processes, which I have presented together, are conceived of as neither episodic nor semantic but some unspecified combination of both, contingent on context and contributed to by an emergent mix of internal and external factors. Since episodic recall for an event tends gradually to be replaced by semantic recall (Renoult et al., 2019), and narratives can support scene construction and simulation (Pillemer et al., 2015), it is difficult to draw a convincing border between narrative expression and mental simulation. On the other hand, it is useful to separate simulation (the construction of imagery) from stimulation (feeling emotional connections to past events). Brons (2019) points out that if imagery is a pre-requisite for episodic recall, those with total aphasia (the inability to generate mental imagery) would be restricted to semantic memory, which is – according to the prevailing theory – devoid of personal and emotional connection (Wheeler et al., 1997). Since, as Brons argues, this is not the case, either episodic recall does not require simulated imagery, or it cannot fully account for the emotional qualities of recall. Distinguishing between simulation and stimulation allows us more easily to recognise the variability of imagery and emotion in manifestations of recall. It allows for forms of recall that are not clearly episodic or semantic (e.g. where imagery is present without a clear sense of ‘re-experience’; or where an emotional and personal connection is felt to a past event without the generation of simulated imagery).
Recent psychological research raises questions about categorising recall into episodic or semantic, even at the level of recalled details. Renoult et al. (2012) suggested that recall may operate on a continuum between episodic and semantic memory, proposing personal semantics as knowledge that is idiosyncratic and personally-relevant, yet does not involve first-person subjectivity or a sense of the spatiotemporal context in which it was acquired. More recently, Renoult et al. (2019) argued that episodic and semantic systems are fluid and interactive, to the extent that they are ‘inextricably intertwined’ (p. 1041). Similarly, Irish and Vatansaver (2020: 43) proposed a ‘gradient-based’ framework in which events are ‘(re)constructed in varying permutations of sensorimotor and conceptual richness, and at different degrees of spatiotemporal specificity, depending on task demands, context, and integrity of the relevant cortical networks’. This work supports the possibility that recall is not episodic or semantic in an a priori sense. Rather, its composition is emergent, contingent on the circumstances in which it happens. For my participants, this context is shaped, in part, by current engagement with photographs and prior photography practices.
Photographs and practices may shape not only what is recalled, but what it is possible to imagine. For example, some participants suggested that photographs could stand in for mental imagery, and sensory and emotive memory.
I think for a memory, once you have a photo, you remember it from the photo. Whereas other things, where you don’t have the images, you remember it in a different way.
Photographs may also contribute to the repertoire of imagery that can be used in imaginative processes (see also Bays et al., 2018; Garry and Gerrie, 2005). For this to be plausible, we would need to acknowledge that semantic memory plays a role in prospection, prediction or simulation (see Irish and Piguet, 2013; Michaelian, 2012). Pillemer et al’.s (2015) vicarious memory (vivid, emotive memories of non-witnessed events with similar, albeit weaker, characteristics to episodic memories) is one avenue of research that supports the notion that photographs or texts can provide a basis for imagining the past. Indeed, through engagement with photos taken by other people, my participants could remember events at which they had not been present. Examples include Ingrid’s memories of her grandfather as a young man, Nick’s constructed understanding of the lives of his ancestors, or JI’s ‘memory’ of her parents waltzing. These forms of secondhand memory were not false memory; participants did not mistakenly believe they had been present when the photos were taken. The personalised, subjective and emotive associations (e.g. JI’s ‘warm’ memory of her parents waltzing, Ingrid’s ‘shock’ at how young her grandfather had been during the war) expressed in these accounts also differed from straightforward semantic memory. Yet, this memory cannot be entirely explained by Pillemer et al’.s (2015) conception of vicarious memory, which is restricted to vivid mental representations of ‘salient life episodes’, excluding mundane happenings, broader historical narratives, or associations with people rather than events.
Cued recall is not a neutral process that leaves pre-existing memory intact. One psychological construct preserved throughout my analysis was inference, which is often portrayed as a less legitimate kind of remembering (Fawns, 2019), yet allows people to make use of external information sources within memory construction. It, like the other distributed processes, is part of cycles of catalysation and construction, involving external materials, that drive remembering ever-onwards, moving us beyond what we have previously thought, yet leaving us grounded in justifiable accounts of what has happened in the past. The dynamics of inference, association, and meaning-making all shape the remembering that happens in the moment, and also seep into future remembering. Distributed remembering is diachronic: set, simultaneously, in the present, and at multiple times in the past (Bietti and Sutton, 2015; Sutton, 2018). These distributed processes need not happen at every instance of cued recall but, having happened at some point, each continues to inform the construction of memory going forward. Meaning-making, for example, need not happen anew each time a photo is encountered. In Ellen’s case, it was clear that, during or after the phone call with her mother, she had established new associations with her graduation photograph. Similarly, one might simulate a scene on one occasion and, at another time, recall the story of the simulated scene. In this instance, the simulation is still important in having informed at least part of the narrative that is recalled.
Research implications
My methodology does not allow me to make claims about relative frequencies of the proposed distributed processes, beyond the fact that each process was frequent within every transcript, and that there often seemed to be a co-occurrence and interdependence between multiple processes. It is also not possible to make meaningful claims about accuracy, or the strength of characteristics of recall, and so on. Though such claims are not the aim of my research, it may be difficult to see how these findings should be reconciled with more traditional psychological research. My intention is that the insights here can help readers to consider the ways that the context of psychological research might influence its results, and how a range of approaches is required for a more complex picture of cued recall.
From a distributed cognition perspective, viewing an image does not neutrally elicit pre-existing memory qualities and content, and any instance of recall is ephemeral, rather than a stable representation of memory. While participants spoke of having certain ‘memories’, the importance of social and material conditions suggests that past events are unlikely to show up in exactly the same way every time they are recalled. Thus, accuracy, valence, and so on, are not properties of ‘a memory’ but situated snapshots of a process that is always in flux, contingent on the circumstances of recall and on a history of relevant practices. Such measures are still relevant, but they are measures of instantiations of distributed recall, rather than of memory (or ‘a memory’) per se. Further, they are not the only relevant considerations. For example, looking at a photo can evoke abstract feelings and association without recalling specific events (Zijlema et al., 2019).
While my work is informed by concerns about ecological validity (Neisser, 1978), there is no ‘natural context’, and no context (museum, lab, ‘real world’) is inherently more valid than another. Even laboratory studies can be ecologically valid if context is appropriately accounted for, and an appreciation of context can illustrate differences in how memory works. However, we do not simply need more controlled studies, each examining relations between specific practices and recall. As Foley (2020) notes, the effects described by Henkel (2014) and Soares and Storm (2018) are dependent on participants’ agency in relation to their photographic practices. The catalytic process (where one distributed process led to others) highlights the importance of examining situations where people can engage with photograph collections in diverse ways. We also need richer, qualitative accounts of remembering with photography, where participants can select photos and navigate devices, and researchers can think beyond characteristics of recall to the nature of memory construction and the factors that influence it.
If cued recall is socially, materially and temporally distributed, then the research setting, the tasks given to the participants, their agency in conducting those tasks, the behaviour of the researcher, and the prior relationships of participants with the particular photographs used, will all have a potentially significant effect on what is remembered and on the experience of remembering. For example, it is likely that private kinds of remembering cannot be captured in an experimental paradigm, because of the methodological challenges of eliciting individual remembering in a social (non-private) situation. In my research, participants engaged in what Frohlich et al. (2002: 171) called storytelling (‘communicating status, experience and wisdom’) about events for which I was not present, rather than reminiscing talk (‘recalling the details of experiences with others’). This latter form was evident in the shared interview between IO and YS, where they collaboratively negotiated accounts of the past, akin to studies of shared remembering by Harris et al. (2011, 2014) which were also underpinned by Sutton’s (2010) distributed cognition framework. Future research into photography and remembering could feature more conversations with multiple participants around shared events.
Conclusion
Previous psychological studies of photography and recall have focused primarily on the output of memory in response to isolated photographic practices, without considering how photographs and practices are involved in the construction of memory. In this paper, I have analysed photo elicitation interviews using a distributed cognition framework to argue that cued recall is more than a straightforward response to a photographic stimulus. Allowing participants to navigate physical spaces and objects, and discuss diverse and idiosyncratic practices (e.g. taking, organising, annotating or sharing photographs) provides a more nuanced view of how environmental and historical elements contribute to remembering. I have proposed that, for my participants, cueing involved a combination of several, potentially distributed processes. First, looking at a photograph could surface an awareness of relevant ideas, which, in turn, could spark further remembering activity. This included the stimulation of feelings and emotions, the production of narrative details and/or simulated imagery, association, inference, and meaning-making. My participants’ practices – both current and historical – intentionally and unintentionally contributed to these facets of cued recall. These results have implications for the environments and methods used in the study of cued recall, and for how researchers might understand recall ‘in the wild’.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I greatly appreciate contributions along the way from Hamish Macleod, Ethel Quayle, John Sutton, Elise van den Hoven, Matthew Elton. Thanks also to participants at a conference in Edinburgh, organised by Mike Wheeler, for their feedback.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
