Verified by Episodic Memory
Episodic memory is a form of long-term memory that captures the details of past events that one has personally experienced. Along with semantic memory, it is considered a kind of explicit memory, because a person is consciously aware of the details that are reproduced.
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What people often think of as “memory”—a detailed, sometimes complex picture of a past personal experience—is what psychologists call episodic memory. All forms of memory involve the collection and retention of information, but episodic memory is closely related to the subjective experience of the rememberer.
One’s personal mental images and impressions of events like birthday parties or weddings are examples of episodic memory. But so are more mundane memories, such as those related to what it was like to walk down the street earlier in the day or what was said during a recent phone call (along with how long the call seemed, the tone of the other person’s voice, and so on).
Episodic memory reflects the richness of a person’s past experiences, from a particular detail of what happened at a remembered moment to how it looked, sounded, and felt to be there. Like a mental time machine, it allows one to mentally “go back” to a version of that moment, even if some details become lost or altered.
Episodic memories are tied to a specific time and place and involve details that are connected to each other and to one’s personal experience of an event. While many kinds of memory are related to one’s life, they are not all episodic: A person can recall the date of her birth or other facts about her early childhood with remembering the experience.
Revisiting past experiences through episodic memory is considered a process of reconstruction. Memory traces are formed in the brain based on an experience. Later, a retrieval cue—which can be internal, like a relevant thought, or external, like a sound, a photo, or a specific locale—prompts the brain to bring details of the past experience to consciousness. According to the “encoding specificity principle,” the most effective memory cues are those that match the context of the remembered experience.
Multiple areas of the brain are involved in the storage and retrieval of episodic memories. The brain’s medial temporal lobe, including structures such as the hippocampus, is thought to play a significant role. Other areas, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex, appear to be involved as well.
As with other kinds of memory, a variety of factors, including how much attention is being paid during an experience, could affect the quality of an episodic memory. An episodic memory with which one has a strong emotional association may also be relatively easy to recall.
Children seem to be able to recall episodic memories by around age 4, though this ability continues to develop throughout early childhood. After around age 60, research finds, episodic memory performance tends to decline, and to a greater degree than semantic memory (or general knowledge).
