ABSTRACT
W here were you at 8.00 p.m. yesterday evening? What is your earliest memory? When did you last see the sea?
All these questions demand a special kind of memory, one that allows you to access specific memories located at a particular point in time: they require episodic memory. You will recall from Chapter 1 that this term was devised by Endel Tulving to emphasize the difference between the recollection of specific events and semantic memory, generalized knowledge of the world. It is episodic memory that allows what Tulving calls “mental time travel,” allowing us to travel back and “relive” earlier episodes, and to use this capacity to travel forward and anticipate future events. You might remember meeting a friend yesterday evening and agreeing to play tennis tomorrow afternoon for instance, and will “travel forward in time” to plan your day accordingly.
