Chapter 1.2 Exploring episodic memory

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Abstract

Fourteen characteristics of episodic memory are outlined and explored in detail. Episodic memories are conceived as sensory-perceptual-conceptual-affective summary records of experience. It is proposed that they are represented separately from other autobiographical knowledge in a phylogenetically older memory system located in posterior brain regions. Autobiographical knowledge provides a conceptual context for episodic memories and episodic memories in turn provide the basis for conceptual knowledge.

Section snippets

Characteristics of episodic memory

Tulving in his seminal 1972 paper defined EM by contrasting it with semantic memory. One of his goals in doing this was to simplify and reduce the number of putative “memory system” proposals which at that time proliferated. For example, different memory systems were proposed for different types of experimental materials, e.g., action memory, picture memory, odor memory, etc. Very few of these fledgling memory systems survived much beyond their initial formulation and even the concept of

The content of episodic memories

A major, possibly even defining feature of EM is that it contains information dating to a unique moment in time and not just any time or time in general but rather to the time of an individual experiencing self. But what exactly is this information? Studies of autobiographical memory often distinguish between what we have termed autobiographical knowledge and EM (Conway, 1992, Conway, 2001, Conway, 2005; Conway and Williams, 2008, and see Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000, for a review).

Functions of episodic memories

Table 1 contains the proposal that the central function of EMs is to maintain a detailed record of short-term goal processing. Recalling the events of a day or part of a day on the day of occurrence yields detailed recollections of what are often in the main mundane routine events. In contrast, recall of such events after a retention interval of several days is very poor (Williams et al., 2007). Unpublished data from our laboratory show that recalling these types of events at all is usually not

The brain basis of episodic memory

Neuroimaging studies of autobiographical memory have proliferated in recent years and this is because recalling autobiographical memories engages the cognitive system in important and meaningful ways, (see Conway et al. (2001) and Maguire (2001) for reviews of early neuroimaging research in this area and Cabeza and St. Jacques (2007) and Schacter and Addis (2007) for more recent reviews, and Tulving for a review of neuroimaging studies of EM). Autobiographical remembering leads to patterns of

Episodic memory: the future

The foregoing discussion highlights important aspects of EM that require further investigation. In brief these are:

  • How are EMs formed?

    What gets encoded, why, and how?

  • What is the nature of the representation?

    Are EMs stored as “whole” units? Or are they stored as sets of associated fragments or features?

  • How are EMs accessed?

    Exactly how does a cue access a representation in long-term memory? Encoding specificity (Tulving and Thomson, 1973) asserts that when information in the search corresponds to

Acknowledgment

The author was supported by the award of a Professorial Fellowship from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), RES-051-27-0127 of the United Kingdom and he thanks the ESRC for this support.

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