Episodic memory

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The episodic memory is part of the declarative long-term memory .

structure

Episodic memory is a sub-component of long-term memory (LZG). The anatomical substrates are the hippocampus , frontal lobes, and temporal lobes . These structures contribute to episodic memory performance.

Based on the information to be remembered, a distinction is made between two types of declarative long-term memory: semantic memory , which recalls knowledge about facts and general aspects of the world, and episodic memory, which contains personal experiences as such. The episodic memory thus enables the recall of past experiences that were formed in a certain situation at a certain point in time. For the rememberer this means to experience himself as a participant in a past event; for the researcher to explore the self-perception of those involved.

function

The processes of episodic memory are responsible for encoding, storing and retrieving specific episodes with chains of events that people have experienced in their life. These events and episodes took place in a specific context and are encoded and retrieved in this context-bound way. In the course of development, episodic memory performance shows a steep increase in childhood and adolescence, remains stable over young and middle adulthood and decreases again with age.

The operations of episodic memory use the semantic memory of the declarative knowledge system, but go beyond this with access to the procedural knowledge system. Recalling from episodic memory requires a special mental attitude called 'recall mode'. The neural components of episodic memory build on a widely ramified network in the cortical and subcortical brain regions that overlaps with the networks of other memory systems, but goes far beyond them. The essence of episodic memory is the connection of three concepts, the self , the autonomic consciousness and the subjective time .

Endel Tulving describes episodic memory as an evolutionarily late, ontogenetically late development and early degradation memory system. It is more vulnerable to neural dysfunction than other memory systems and, in its complexity, is probably unique to humans. “It allows mental time travel through subjective time - past, present, future. This mental time travel allows the 'owner' of episodic memory (the 'self') to remember his own previous 'thought' experiences as well as to think about possible future experiences through the medium of autonoetic consciousness ”( Tulving : 2005, translated from Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005).

In Conway's view, Tulving's original concept should be revised: for Conway, episodic memory is a system that contains experiential, highly contextual and detailed sensory perceptions of recent experiences and events. These experiences only last for short periods of time (minutes or hours). They are only permanently remembered if they are linked to autobiographical content .

Polling and cueing

What is remembered from episodic memory basically depends on which cues are currently available in the perceived environment or in working memory (e.g. Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966). There are two types of episodic cues: feature cues (cues from properties) and context cues (cues from the environment). Feature cues contain components from the memory sought. In contrast to feature cues, context cues refer to aspects of the context that defined the framework for encoding. A distinction can be made between external (e.g. room, lighting, people present) and internal contexts (e.g. emotions or thoughts). The best context cue is yourself: if information can be related to aspects of yourself, the memory is better than if information is related to aspects of other people or objects. The cues turn out to be elements of a dynamic auto-referent and perception-dependent trigger system. Author's speaker: Episodes trigger episodes and set off association cascades. Currently experienced episodes and experiences from the past do not obey the linear chronology. The emotional hierarchy of experiences has an ordering function, with the scale ranging from incidentally emotionally influenced episodes to key biographical experiences. Perception-dependent: Music is a potent catalyst in the reanimation of past episodes, for example a currently received hit from the past provokes a nostalgic journey through time. Odors also have a catalytic function in the trigger system. Secondary, not personally experienced episodes, received in fiction reading, do not find their way into the episodic memory. However, readers prefer novels with affinities to their own biography, the episodes of which have a trigger function.

Context dependency

An episodic memory trace of an event consists of the information about the known things and people involved, which is stored in the semantic memory, and the context information, which is stored in the episodic memory. For example, you can remember which groceries you wrote on the shopping list that you unfortunately forgot at home. The individual words (for example “garlic, wine, detergent”) and their meanings have long been known to us, they are represented in the semantic memory. Episodic memory stores the fact that we saw these words in a certain order in a certain context (on the shopping list we wrote this morning). In addition, there are usually other contextual features, for example the room in which the list was written, the experience of writing it down, the cognitive processes when planning shopping, etc.

Encoding specificity refers to the fact that memories from episodic memory can most easily be retrieved when the circumstances of the retrieval are similar to those of the encoding. Encoding specificity often refers to external contexts (for example a room). Internal contexts can also promote memory if they are similar to those used during encoding when retrieved. These include the state-dependent memory and the mood-congruent memory. For example, memory under the influence of nicotine may be better if the person was in the same state while studying, or someone remembers something they learned better than when they are happy again.

Context dependency of remembering means that new material is more easily remembered if the details of the circumstances surrounding the learning situation are also restored when it is called up. Example: If you had a good idea while walking and later forgot it, you walk the path again and remember the idea again. Context dependency is one reason why it makes no sense to study in a noisy environment (for example with the radio) if you are being tested in a quiet room.

Representation levels

The content of episodic memory is a mixture of many different types of information. These different components can be used as whole units or as separate parts. So when we experience something, we don't remember it directly, we process it on several levels. The memory of a text, for example, consists of three levels of representation: the surface shape corresponds to the literal text, the text base is the abstract representation of the text and the mental model corresponds more to the mental simulation of the event described than to the text itself (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983) . Studies (Kintsch, Welsch, Schmalhofer & Zimny, 1990) have shown that the memory for the surface form disintegrates the fastest and the memory for the abstract text base less quickly (but here, too, this happens over time), while the memory for the mental Model is relatively durable and shows no major changes. So when we read a newspaper, we easily forget the exact words in the article, but we remember the basic ideas in it for a long time. The memory of the described situation as such, however, i.e. i.e. what the article was actually about lasts much longer and is what we can still remember after a relatively long time.

Autobiographical memory

The autobiographical memory is often assigned to the episodic memory . The autobiographical memory is understood to mean the memory of one's own life story. It is controversial whether episodic and autobiographical memory are identical. Endel Tulving and Hans Markowitsch see episodic and autobiographical memory as largely congruent. But of course there are autobiographical data that are not remembered as episodes: one's own birth (birthday), place of birth, etc. With the term “episodic-autobiographical memory”, Hans Markowitsch refers to this multilayeredness.

According to the prevailing opinion, however, a distinction is made between episodic memory and autobiographical memory, even if the two parts of memory have certain overlaps: episodic memory stores rather recent, unimportant episodes that are forgotten or become semantic knowledge , while autobiographical memory for the permanent storage of autobiographical episodes with great significance for the individual is responsible and has an essential significance for the formation of identity and the " self ".

literature

  • AD Baddeley : Episodic memory. In: AD Baddeley, MW Eysenck , MC Anderson: Memory. Psychology Press, Hove, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-84872-001-5 , pp. 93-112.
  • MA Conway: Sensory-perceptual episodic memory and its context: autobiographical memory. In: Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 2001, pp. 1375-1384.
  • ML Howe, ML Courage: The emergence and early development of autobiographical memory. In: Psychological Review. 1997, pp. 499-523.
  • Theodor Jäger: Episodic memory performance in depressive symptoms. Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 2006, urn: nbn: de: bsz: 291-psydok-6859 PDF; 62KB .
  • W. Kintsch et al. a .: Sentence memory: A theoretical analysis. In: Journal of Memory and Language. 29, 1990, pp. 133-159.
  • Kramer et al. a .: Dissociations in Hippocampal and Frontal Contributions to Episodic Memory Performance. In: Neuropsychology. 2005, pp. 799-805.
  • Hans-Joachim Markowitsch: The I and its past. How does our memory work? In: Deutscher Hochschulverband (Ed.): Highlights of Science - an Almanac. Publishing house research & teaching, Bonn 2005, pp. 57–63.
  • Hans-Joachim Markowitsch, H. Welzer: The autobiographical memory. Organic brain basics and biosocial development. Klett, Stuttgart 2005.
  • K. Nelson: The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural development theory. In: Psychological Review. 2004, pp. 486-511.
  • G. Radvansky: Human memory. Pearson, Boston 2006.
  • Endel Tulving: How many memory systems are there? In: American Psychologist. 40, 1985, pp. 385-398.
  • Endel Tulving: Episodic memory and autonoesis: Uniquely human? In: H. Terrace, J. Metcalfe (Ed.): The missing link in cognition: Evolution of self-knowing consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York 2005.
  • Endel Tulving, Z. Pearlstone: Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. In: Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 5, 1966, pp. 381-391.
  • TA van Dijk, W. Kintsch: Strategies of discourse comprehension. Academic Press, New York 1983.
  • H. Welzer, Hans-Joachim Markowitsch: Outlines of an interdisciplinary memory research. In: Psychological Rundschau. 2001, pp. 205-214.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. Tulving: How many memory systems are there? In: American Psychologist . Volume 40, 1985, pp. 385-398.
  2. ↑ a b J. Markowitsch, H. Welzer: The autobiographical memory. Organic brain basics and biosocial development. Klett, Stuttgart 2005.
  3. ^ Martin A. Conway: Sensory-perceptual episodic memory and its context: Autobiographical memory . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B . London 2001, p. 1375–1384 , doi : 10.1098 / rstb.2001.0940 (English).
  4. ↑ E. Tulving, Z. Pearl Stone: Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. In: Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 5, 1966, pp. 381-391.
  5. ^ TA van Dijk, W. Kintsch: Strategies of discourse comprehension. Academic Press, New York 1983.
  6. ^ W. Kintsch, DM Welsch, F. Schmalhofer, S. Zimny: Sentence memory: A theoretical analysis. In: Journal of Memory and Language. 29, 1990, pp. 133-159.
  7. ^ Rüdiger Pohl: The autobiographical memory: The psychology of our life story. 1st edition W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-018614-9 .
  8. ↑ Daniel L. Schacter: We are memory: memory and personality. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl, Reinbek near Hamburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-499-61159-9 .
  9. ↑ Hans J. Markowitsch, Harald Welzer .: The autobiographical memory: organic brain basics and biosocial development. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-608-94406-8 .