Does your episodic memory help you remember your first prom?
You wore a lovely turquoise gown, your mom couldn't stop smiling, and your dad was delighted to meet your date. It was a fantastic evening, right?
Well…
Let's just say, that's how you remember it.
If you ask your mom, on the other hand, she would say:
"It was a frantic evening. You couldn't decide what to wear and were almost in tears when the hair-rollers wouldn't set in. More annoyingly, your dad was upset about your date and was being difficult".
Each person remembers a specific event in his or her unique way – this is called your episodic memory.
By definition, episodic memory involves the recollection of specific events, situations, and experiences.
Episodic Memory Examples Are Easy To Find
Examples of episodic memory would include your memory of your first day of school or your first kiss. Apart from your overall recall of the event itself, episodic memories also involve your memory of the location and time that the event occurred.
For another powerful episodic memory example, please watch this video. It includes some powerful exercises that will help you improve your episodic memory too:
Someone else's recollection of that same event or experience would be different (maybe not as dramatically different as your prom night, but different nevertheless).
If you want to remember past events in its full technicolor details, you must strengthen your episodic memory.
Keen on storing everyday information in an easily retrievable place? Here's a quick demo of how to use Memory Palace to store information that matters to you:
Are Episodic Memories And Autobiographical Memories The Same?
Not exactly!
Autobiographical and episodic memories are personal memories from the past.
However, autobiographical memory is more general, for example, when you recall the street name of a house growing up.
On the other hand, episodic memory is more specific to time.
It's like remembering your 13th birthday party that took place on a particular street. (Electromagnetic Differences in the Brain during Memory Retrieval, Warren Scott Merrifield, 2007)
In effect, although autobiographical memory involves episodic memory, it also relies on semantic memory. For instance, you can remember the city you were born in and the date, but you wouldn't have any specific memories of being born.
Here's A Fascinating Fact:
Research into links between memory and handedness suggest that ambidextrous people (who can perform some tasks with one hand and some with the other) tend to show better autobiographical memory than people who perform almost all tasks with either one hand or the other.
In contrast to autobiographical and episodic memories, semantic memory refers to the understanding of factual knowledge that is not connected to any specific time and place. For example, the knowledge that the sky is blue. Semantic memory is similar to looking an item up in the dictionary.
Often an individual has no specific recollection, or thoughts of re-experiencing, the event in which the semantic information was acquired; therefore, semantic memories are thought to be "known" rather than "remembered" (McKoon, Ratcliff, & Dell, 1986).
Episodic Memory + Semantic Memory = Declarative Memory
Episodic memory and semantic memory together makeup part of your long-term memory and are known as declarative memory.
But before a memory is cemented into long-term memory as episodic memory, it must pass through the semantic memory, noted Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto in his book, Elements of Episodic Memory.
Tulving and colleagues (Habib, Nybe
Published on 7 years, 10 months ago
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