Editing Episodic memory (section)

==Autobiographical memory==
An [[autobiographical memory]] is a personal representation of general or specific events and personal facts. Additionally, it also refers to the memory of a person's history. An individual does not remember exactly everything that has happened in one's past. Memory is constructive, where previous experience affects how we remember events and what we end up recalling from memory. Similarly, autobiographical memory is constructive and reconstructed as an evolving process of history. A person's autobiographical memory is fairly reliable, although the reliability of autobiographical memories is questionable because of memory distortions.<ref>{{Citation|last=Brewer|first=William F. |chapter=What is autobiographical memory?|pages=25–49|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-511-55831-3|doi=10.1017/cbo9780511558313.006 |title=Autobiographical Memory|year=1986}}</ref>

Autobiographical memories can differ for special periods of life. For instance, people recall a few personal events from the first years of their lives. The loss of these first events is called childhood or [[infantile amnesia]]. Also, people tend to recall many personal events from adolescence and early adulthood. This effect is called the [[reminiscence bump]]. Additionally, people recall many personal events from their previous few years. For adolescents and young adults, the reminiscence bump and the recent events can coincide.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Jansari|first1=Ashok|last2=Parkin|first2=Alan J.|date=1996|title=Things that go bump in your life: Explaining the reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory.|journal=Psychology and Aging|volume=11|issue=1|pages=85–91|doi=10.1037/0882-7974.11.1.85|pmid=8726374|issn=0882-7974}}</ref>

It is known that autobiographical memories initially are stored as episodic memories, but it is currently unknown if autobiographical memories are the same as episodic memories or if the autobiographical memories become converted to [[semantic memory|semantic memories]] with time.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Piolino|first1=Pascale|last2=Desgranges|first2=Béatrice|last3=Benali|first3=Karim|last4=Eustache|first4=Francis|date=July 2002|title=Episodic and semantic remote autobiographical memory in ageing|journal=Memory|volume=10|issue=4|pages=239–257|doi=10.1080/09658210143000353|pmid=12097209|s2cid=33870697|issn=0965-8211}}</ref>