Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview
- Part II Historical, theoretical, and methodological contexts for the study of autobiographical memory
- Part III The general organization of autobiographical memory
- Part IV The temporal organization of autobiographical memory
- Part V Temporal distributions of autobiographical memories
- Part VI Failures of autobiographical memory
- Author index
- Subject index
Part IV - The temporal organization of autobiographical memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview
- Part II Historical, theoretical, and methodological contexts for the study of autobiographical memory
- Part III The general organization of autobiographical memory
- Part IV The temporal organization of autobiographical memory
- Part V Temporal distributions of autobiographical memories
- Part VI Failures of autobiographical memory
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
One of the central organizing properties of autobiographical memory is that it occurs along a time line. Events occur before, after, or at about the same time as other events. Events from the same time period tend to appear together in reminiscence and tend to be lost and recovered together in amnesia.
The two chapters in Part IV turn this organizational principle upside down. Instead of time organizing autobiographical memory, autobiographical memory organizes time. Time is not only the ticking of a clock, it is the passage of the events that mark one's life. This latter, personal-social-cultural-event-marked time emerges as the more important for autobiographical memory.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Autobiographical Memory , pp. 135 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986