ABSTRACT
What do you know of your own past? We suspect that most persons asked this question would reply, “Why, everything!” Perhaps after a pause the person would go on to say, “Well, everything important, at least!” Our knowledge of our own personal past seems to roll like a carpet, stretching continuously behind us from the present beneath our feet into the distance of childhood and on toward the vanishing point of infantile amnesia. People know that they quickly forget many of the minutiae of daily life (e.g., what shoes did you wear to work last Wednesday?), and most people occasionally discover that their recollections of a past event differ from those of others who also experienced that event. But people nonetheless seem to have an intuitive sense that their autobiographical memories are in all important respects complete and accurate. Indeed, people who report very poor memory for substantial periods of their personal pasts may be diagnosed as suffering mental illness (C. A. Ross, 1989) or brain damage (Kopelman, 1997).
