Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.
Abstract
An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence.
It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene
construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by
a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than
one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be
done from a specific location and time; this introduces a "self" located in space
and time, which is a necessary, but need not be a sufficient, condition for a sense
of reliving. We base our theory on scene construction rather than reliving because
this allows the integration of many literatures and because there is more accumulated
knowledge about scene construction's phenomenology, behavior, and neural basis. Event
memory differs from episodic memory in that it does not conflate the independent dimensions
of whether or not a memory is relived, is about the self, is recalled voluntarily,
or is based on a single encoding with whether it is recalled as a single occurrence
of a scene. Thus, we argue that event memory provides a clearer contrast to semantic
memory, which also can be about the self, be recalled voluntarily, and be from a unique
encoding; allows for a more comprehensive dimensional account of the structure of
explicit memory; and better accounts for laboratory and real-world behavioral and
neural results, including those from neuropsychology and neuroimaging, than does episodic
memory.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10068Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1037/a0037907Publication Info
Rubin, David C; & Umanath, Sharda (2015). Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.
Psychol Rev, 122(1). pp. 1-23. 10.1037/a0037907. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10068.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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David C. Rubin
Juanita M. Kreps Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
For .pdfs of all publications click here My main research interest has been in
long-term memory, especially for complex (or "real-world") stimuli. This work includes
the study of autobiographical memory and oral tra

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