ABSTRACT
Memories help define who we are. Our opinions, attitudes, likes, and dislikes are a result of our previous experiences. Memory is the repository of those experiences and the shaper of our future actions. Thus, it is important to understand our memories of the events and episodes of our lives. It has been found that memories of personally experienced events are stored and remembered in ways that have unique characteristics. Memories for events that we experienced are episodic memories, whereas memories for general world knowledge are semantic memories. An example of this distinction is the difference between remembering the last movie you saw (episodic) versus remembering what a movie is (semantic). This chapter covers episodic memories. Semantic memories are covered in Chapter 9.
