ABSTRACT
Memory is used in a quite inflationary way in contemporary cognitive science for any process that stores information over some period of time. Episodic memory is clearly more specific but may to many readers mean nothing more than a process that stores information about a particular episode. I use the term here with the even more specific meaning that Tulving (1972, 1985) has given it with reference to Ebbinghaus as “calling back into consciousness a seemingly lost state that is then ‘immediately recognized as something formerly experienced’ (Ebbinghaus, 1885, p. 1)” (Tulving, 1985, p. 3). In this use episodic memory is one kind of what James (1890) denoted memory proper. “Memory proper (or secondary memory) is the knowledge of an event, or fact…with the additional consciousness that we have… experienced it before.” (p. 648).
