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Remembering experienced and reported events
Author(s) -
Larsen Steen F.,
Plunkett Kim
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.2350010104
Subject(s) - autobiographical memory , psychology , event (particle physics) , cognitive psychology , cognition , agency (philosophy) , recall , philosophy , neuroscience , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics
Reported events are distinguished from personally experienced (autobiographical) events by being known from reports provided from some person or agency—for example, news reports. Memory for reported events has usually been ignored theoretically, or classified as ‘semantic’, though it is clearly concerned with specific, dated episodes. We discuss a number of differences between the information available to specify experienced and reported events, and the possible implications of such differences for remembering the events. A study of retrieval of the two types of events, prompted by cue words, showed that reported events take much longer time to retrieve but are dated as being equally old as experienced events. Effects of using emotion words as cues were similar for the two event types. These results suggest that reported events are forgotten (or become inaccessible) at the same rate as experienced events, but that memories are organized in such a way that reported events often have to be accessed indirectly through memories of associated autobiographical events.