Final answer:
The shutdown of Riley's personality islands in 'Inside Out' represents her losing access to crucial aspects of her personality, leading to emotional and personality changes.
Step-by-step explanation:
When Riley's personality islands are shut down in the movie 'Inside Out', it symbolically represents aspects of her personality and emotional experiences becoming inaccessible. These personality islands are the core aspects that define her character, such as Family Island, Friendship Island, Hockey Island, and so on. As they begin to shut down, Riley starts to lose the parts of herself that are most important to her, leading to an emotional shutdown and difficulty expressing and experiencing the full range of her emotions. This illustrates how crucial our core memories and experiences are to our overall emotional well-being and personality development.