Episodic Memory

A detailed Summary of Episodic Memory

The mechanism of human memory recall is neither a parallel nor a sequential retrieval of previously learned events. Instead, it is a complex system that has elements of both sequential and parallel modalities, engaging all of the sensory faculties of the individual. On an everyday level, issues about memory and recall affect everyone. It has a bearing on ramifications from the trivial to matters of life and death. Thus, a particular student might worry about his or her ability to remember 'memorized' material, a person might worry about losing his or her mind, and, there are the more troubling issue of diseases affecting memory such as Alzheimer's disease. According to Tulving, episodic memory represents only a small part of the much larger domain of memory (Tulving, 1992, p.1). Specifically, episodic memory is the process involved in remembering past events. This paper is a review of research findings on episodic memory with specific attention to episodic memory in adults and infants.

In society, it is quite common for people in their golden years or even well before that, to worry about losing their memory. There is scientific evidence to support this notion of degradation of m

The foregoing studies were focused on understanding memory in healthy adults. Since failing memory and mental diseases have been shown to have some association, some studies have also examined the use of memory in the diagnosis of primary stages of dementia. Herlitz, Hill, Fratiglioni, and Backman (1995, pp. M107-M113) reported that a study of the efficiency of cognitive tests in diagnosing and staging dementia proceeds with the aid of cognitive parameters evaluating episodic memory, while visuospatial assessments help stage dementia. This finding was held by the researchers to imply a faster degeneration of episodic memory than visuospatial capacities.

Bauer and Dow (1994, pp. 403-417) conducted a series of three experiments that tested whether 1- to 2-year-olds generalize their knowledge of events to new "instantiations," and postulated one possible mechanism by which generalization is accomplished. In their first experiment, 16 and 20 month-old children enacted six separate event sequences. One week later the same children were tested for delayed recall. At delayed testing, the props used to enact one-half of the events were replaced by novel, functionally equivalent props. Children in both age groups used the new props to enact the events, thereby demonstrating spontaneous generalization. Experiments 2 and 3 tested whether generalization is accomplished through forgetting of the specific details of the original event. At Session 1, 16- (Experiments 2 and 3) and 20-month-olds (Experiment 2) enacted four separate events. One week later the same children selected from an array of props those used to enact the events in Session 1. Among the objects from which selection was made were functionally equivalent props of the sort used to assess generalizat

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Approximate Word count = 1197
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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