Discuss episodic memory, including memory for familiar events and memory for one-time events

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Episodic memory is memory for everyday experiences. In remembering everyday experiences, children recall complex, meaningful information. Between 3 and 6 years, children improve sharply in memory for relations among stimuli, which supports an increasingly rich episodic memory in early childhood. Like adults, preschoolers remember familiar, repeated events in terms of scripts, general descriptions of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation. Young children's scripts begin as a structure of main acts. Although first scripts contain only a few acts, they are almost always recalled in correct sequence. With age, scripts become more elaborate. Scripts help children (and adults) organize and interpret everyday experiences. Once formed, they can be used to predict what will happen in the future. Children rely on scripts in make-believe play and when listening to and telling stories. Scripts also support children's earliest efforts at planning as they represent sequences of actions that lead to desired goals. The second type of everyday memory is autobiographical memory, or representations of personally meaningful, one-time events. As preschoolers' cognitive and conversational skills improve, their descriptions of special events become better organized in time and more detailed.