The origins of memories

Chapters 11, 12, and 13 are concerned with age differences in memory for spoken and written information and focus mainly on the processes of encoding and comprehension. This chapter is concerned with the nature of the memory representation and with wider issues arising out of the distinction between perceived and generated memories. This distinction applies to memory for all kinds of information, including scenes, events, and actions as well as discourse.

However, many memories are for things that never happened. This statement seems paradoxical because we tend to assume that memory representations originate from perceived events. We overlook the fact that memories may also be for events that never actually occurred, but have only been thought of or dreamed about. They may be memories of actions that were never performed, but only planned, considered, or intended. They may be memories of words that were never heard or read, but only imagined or inferred. The distinction between externally derived memories that originate from perceptions and internally derived self-generated memories is not always clear-cut. According to current cognitive theories, the sensory information derived from external events is interpreted, elaborated, or transformed by the application of stored prior knowledge and rules. So a perceived memory representation is a joint product comprising some elements that originated internally and some elements that originated externally.