Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory is the area of memory where population store facts about themselves. There are some domains included in autobiographical memory. Self-description is the domain that shop facts about a person's sense of identity. In this domain, for example, facts such as a person's popular flavor of ice cream, what their political or moral viewpoint is and either or not they like red wine are elements of self-description. Emotional memory is the domain that not only contains a person's memories of an emotional contact but also helps them to operate their moods. If a person broods over a particularly bad memory or a memory which triggers a negative feeling or emotion, he or she can change this mood by recalling a contrasting emotion, mental of a memory which brought them joy or happiness instead.

The domain of event memory makes up the largest part of a person's autobiographical memory. Three cut off but associated domains make up this part of memory. Exact events in a person's contact of the world, normal events about a wide range of actions involved in an event such as going to the physician or the grocery store and a preserved overview of a person's life. This overview enables a person to sass questions about his or her life such as 'Where did you grow up?' and 'Where did you go on vacation last year?'.

The process of event memory is commonly begun at the general-event level, the facts the person is seeking to know is commonly at the specific-event level. For example, if a person is attempting to retrieve the memory of having stayed at The Plaza Hotel, the beginning point for accessing this memory is most likely the normal event 'staying at hotels'. Through time, Exact events are consolidated into a normal event. For example, all the occasions where a person has visited house for the holidays come to be one generic 'script' which incorporates all the vital experiences and actions that are representative of the going-home-to-visit-the-family-at-holidays event. Once the Exact event is included in this normal event script, only those single events where something unusual/compelling/entertaining occurred will distinguish it specifically. The force of these generic scripts in the memory often triggers population to misremember details of a Exact event, naturally because they are representative of the event as a whole.

If a person has not yet experienced an event and does not have an existing script for the experience, the event is more likely to be remembered. The memory for an event will be stronger for experiences where the event cannot fit into a mold of what the person's preexisting expectations are of what will happen. A person's typically habit event can cause a lack of memory function due to the fact that these events are habit or already scripted. For example, if a person always puts their keys on the hallway table when they arrive home, the person will expect the keys to be there. If they have broken that pattern because of an unexpected circumstance, such as answering the telephone, the person might not remember they left their keys near the phone instead of the hallway table since the script in their memory tells them the put the keys on the table, as per the script.

In order for our brains to remember a Exact event, a unique element helps a person recall that event as grand from a similar event. The nature of the event, who was there (the population involved), where it occurred (the location) are single pieces of facts that can more facilely recall the memory.