Forensic Psychology: EPISODIC MEMORY

Forensic Psychology: EPISODIC MEMORY

Memory is the process of storing information about the world in our brains to give us a sense of who we are. It tells us what we did yesterday, five years ago, and what we should do tomorrow.

What is Episodic Memory?

• Endel Tulving defined episodic memory in 1972 as our ability to recall specific past events such as what happened, where, and when.

• The distinguishing feature of episodic memory is that it allows you to mentally travel back in time and experience the event all over again. We know we are recalling a past event when we recall episodic memories. That is, we are conscious of re-experience.

How Episodic Memories are made?

• Creating an episodic memory entails several distinct steps, each of which involves a different brain system. Encoding is the first step in the process, which your brain goes through each time you form a new episodic memory.

• Consolidation is a step in the process of forming an episodic memory that essentially bakes the event into your long-term memory. This helps to strengthen the memory so that it is not lost if the brain suffers an impairment. Trauma, tumours, metabolic conditions such as Vitamin B1 deficiency, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease can all have an impact on episodic memory.

• The final process involves recollection. Recollection is a process that elicits the retrieval of contextual information pertaining to a specific incident. Sometimes a recollection from long-term memory is retrieved almost effortlessly, and other times it may need something to trigger it, such as a word, an image, or even a smell.

Types of Episodic Memory

There are a number of different types of episodic memories that people may have. These include:

1. Episodic memories of specific events: These are memories of specific events in an individual's life. A specific episodic memory is remembering your first kiss.

2. Personal fact episodic memories: -Knowing who was President the year you got married, the make and model of your first car, and the name of your first boss are all examples of personal fact episodic memories.

3. General event episodic memories: -What it's like to step into the ocean in general. This is a recollection of what a typical personal event is like. It could be based on memories of many times stepping into the ocean over the years.

4. Flashbulb memories: - These moments can be very personal, such as when you found out your grandmother had died. In other cases, these memories may be shared by a large number of people in a social group. Shared flashbulb memories include the moments you learned about the 9/11 attacks or the Paris concert theatre attacks.

Unique Features of Episodic Memory

The key function of episodic memory is to allow the individual to remember personal past happenings.

• This remembering takes the form of mentally “traveling” in subjectively experienced time.

• Episodic memory, unlike semantic memory, is self-centered. The operations of episodic memory are predicated on one's conscious awareness of oneself as an independent entity that is separate from the rest of the world.

• Episodic remembering requires the activation, by way of voluntary or involuntary processes, of a special kind of mental state that has been called ‘episodic retrieval mode.

• Episodic memory that all healthy humans possess probably does not exist in other animals, although ‘episodic-like’ memory capacities have already been identified in several species.

• The recent cognitive neuroscience literature suggests that the prefrontal cortex is also involved in the formation of new episodic memory.

Some examples of episodic memory;

  Your skiing vacation last winter.

  The first time you traveled by airplane.

  Your roommate from your first year in college.

  The details about how you learned of a relative’s death.

  Fearing water because you were knocked over by a wave at the beach as a child.

  Your first day at a new job.

  Attending a relative’s 75th birthday party.

  The movie you saw on your first date with your wife.