Memory for personal events and people, the episodes of
your life.
It is this kind of memory that is which is tested in
experimental work. It tends to be unstructured and rapidly lost, particularly as
new information arrives and interferes. However it can quite precise , Lindsay
and Norman(1977) asked students ‘what were you doing on a Monday afternoon in
the 3rd week in September, 2 years ago?’, and found many students
actually knew !
Very vivid episodic memories have been termed
‘flashbulb’ memories(Brown and Kulik 1977) which involve recalling exactly
what you were doing and where you were when a particularly important , exciting
or emotional event happened
Memory for meanings, feelings, ideas, language, other
cognitive concepts and general knowledge.
It is well organised.
Usually isn’t forgotten and doesn’t disappear in cases
of amnesia.
It is also known as implicit memory, this is the memory
for Knowing how:
Our knowledge of how to do things, skills such as riding a
bicycle.
Although we know how to do these things we are often
completely unable to consciously introspect upon or describe how we do them.
Procedural knowledge is very resistant to forgetting and is also resistant to
brain damage that eradicates other forms of memory.
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