I Remember When… This article was written by a student taking a course at Bryn Mawr College and reflects that student's research and thoughts at the time the article was written. Like other materials on Serendip, the document is not intended to be "authoritative", but rather is provided to encourage others to educate themselves and think about topics of interest for themselves and, by providing links Relevant web sites, to serve as a “window” to help them do so. Web links were active at the time of journal publication, but are not updated. There is a permanent joke in our family, or rather between my sister and me. It usually comes up at family gatherings, around the time when we're all trying to decide what to do, where to go, or what to eat. Mom will say something like, "Let's have this spaghetti casserole with turnip greens that I made at last summer's reunion, we all enjoyed it so much." Jackie and I exchange a look that says, “Gross, we hated that,” and invariably, Mom, seeing the look pass between us, will say in all seriousness, “No, no. I remember it very well. We all loved this casserole. "What continually amuses Jackie and I is how confidently Mom remembers the same event as us, but so differently. How can people be so certain and yet be wrong about this? point about events in our own history? And yet it happens again and again, and not just in my family The observation that episodic memory retrieval is vulnerable to distortion has been widely documented. errors can be predicted with some reliability. (1) In order to situate "episodic memory", it is useful to know several distinctions in memory research. The most basic is between brief and long-lasting memories, called memories. short-term memory (STM) (or working memory, WM), and long-term memory (LTM), there are qualitative distinctions, for example between explicit and implicit, between declarative and procedural – both distinctions. are linked to the awareness of memory. Explicit/declarative memory encompasses facts, figures, and all conscious memory. This is what we commonly call memory. (2) This type of memory is flexible, fast and specialized for one-time learning. (3) Procedural/implicit memory is considered the longest-lasting memory and encompasses learned habits, skills, and things you “know” but do not consciously think about..