ABSTRACT
This chapter presents general characteristics of autobiographical memories, some special methods for studying autobiographical memories, and the various levels of detail in them. It considers how autobiographical memory has a narrative character. The chapter looks at superior memory for surprising events that can give rise to what are known as flashbulb memories. Autobiographical memories are about events in our lives and how they are interrelated. This includes their relationship to episodic and semantic memories, their nature, and the ease with which they are retrieved. Autobiographical memory is a complex form of memory with components of episodic and semantic memories. They contain information about both individual events and stable characteristics of a person. Autobiographical memory is hard to simply and easily describe because it is made up of different types of information. Using this approach, there are three levels that can be identified: the event level; general events; and lifetime periods. The autobiographical memories elicited by odors tend to be emotional.
