Two types of event memory
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Psychologists and neuroscientists have long debated the nature of memory: How many types are there? Tulving (1, 2) proposed a distinction between semantic memory (general knowledge) and episodic memory (personal experiences that carry information about time and location). Tulving noted that episodic memories are autobiographical in nature: “Most, if not all, episodic memory claims a person makes can be translated into the form ‘I did such and such, in such and such a place, and in such and such a time’” (1, p 389). He also provided examples of episodic memory (1, pp 386–387) to indicate that he had in mind both events from the laboratory (remembering words in a list encountered in a laboratory setting) and those from life (remembering meeting a sea captain who knew many jokes) as indicative of episodic memory. No distinction was made between retrieval of the two types of events. The interesting results of Patihis et al. (3) and previous papers on people with highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) (4, 5) call into question part of Tulving’s (1, 2) claims. Memory for laboratory events may be fundamentally different from memory for events of one’s life. A person can excel at one type of retrieval but not the other.
Authors: Henry L. Roediger, Kathleen B. McDermott
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2008207564