Is Mental Time Travel A Human Capacity?

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Submitted by carmein on September 25, 2007

  • Category: Psychology
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Is Mental Time Travel A Human Capacity?

Is mental time travel a uniquely human capacity?

In 1972 Tulving proposed a distinction between two functionally distinguishable memory systems – episodic and semantic. He argued that episodic memory was a uniquely human capacity to re-experience one’s own past through autonoesis or self –awareness, compared to semantic knowledge that does not require a subjective sense of self and time (Tulving 1972). In other words, episodic memory deals with “personal, temporally dated events that the rememberer has witnessed, whereas semantic memory involves general, abstract, timeless knowledge that a person shares with others” (Tulving 1986, pg 307). The two systems are...

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