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Episodic Memory Training

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Cognitive Training

Abstract

Episodic memory circumscribes the ability to remember events, occurrences, and situations embedded in their temporal and spatial context – in other words, the memory of “what,” “where,” and “when.” Throughout the lifespan, episodic memory functioning continuously undergoes extensive change, with rapid increases during childhood, some decreases in adulthood, and accelerated decline in very old age. Given the important role that episodic memory plays in our daily lives, the prospect of potential trainability of episodic memory is a highly attractive idea. This applies to educational settings that aim to facilitate children’s memory, to younger adults hoping to optimize their episodic memory ability, but probably even more to older adults, who generally experience a profound decline in episodic memory functioning that can seriously affect their well-being and life quality. In this chapter, we first provide a brief definition and account of the processes that are involved in episodic memory. We then discuss two theoretical frameworks, one concerning the components of episodic memory across the lifespan, the other concerning the conception of plasticity. These theoretical frameworks help to guide us through the large body of memory training literature. We then summarize and integrate the behavioral and neuroimaging literature on memory training. Building upon some key points extracted from these sets of literature, we finally discuss the utility of multifactorial types of memory training and potential future work in this direction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the Method of Loci, participants are presented with lists of words, which are learned by forming visual associations between the nth word and the nth place (locus) of a fixed trajectory of places (loci) scanned mentally by the participant. Retrieval occurs by taking a mental walk along the trajectory, retrieving the associated image at each locus, and deriving the original word from it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Elisabeth Wenger, Yana Fandakova & Yee Lee Shing

  2. Institute of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Yee Lee Shing

Authors
  1. Elisabeth Wenger
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  2. Yana Fandakova
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  3. Yee Lee Shing
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Correspondence to Elisabeth Wenger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Tilo Strobach

  2. University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany

    Julia Karbach

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Wenger, E., Fandakova, Y., Shing, Y.L. (2021). Episodic Memory Training. In: Strobach, T., Karbach, J. (eds) Cognitive Training. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39292-5_12

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