Friedman (1993)

Memory for the time of past events.

Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 44-66

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DOI

Abstract

Paraphrase, not the publisher's wording. The review surveys laboratory and autobiographical work on adults' memory for when past events occurred and sets out the main established phenomena. It distinguishes several kinds of information such knowledge could rest on: distances, locations, and relative times of occurrence. Existing theories are classified in those terms and each is weighed against the available evidence. Against the common intuition that chronology is a basic property of autobiographical memory, the review concludes that human memory holds no single natural temporal code, and that a chronological past instead depends on active, repeated construction.

Reference

Friedman, W. J. (1993). Memory for the time of past events. Psychological Bulletin, 113(1), 44–66. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.113.1.44

What Rests on This

1 mechanism cites this source. Each finding below is quoted as it appears on that mechanism's own page.

Temporal Placement Memory Processes

Definition

Memory for when events happened covers their order, how long ago they occurred and their date. Friedman's review sorted the theories into three kinds: an impression of distance (such as how strong or accessible a memory feels), reconstruction of a location in time from remembered context and known time patterns, and stored before-and-after relations, with reconstruction the best supported