Autobiographical and semantic memory

Seen any good movies lately?

Yes, one I have to recommend, it’s really good, oh what’s the name of it, it’s on the tip of my tongue. That’s the problem when you get old. You can remember events in the distant past but sometimes you can’t recall what you did last week.

It is a nuisance, isn’t it. You have to choose subjects to talk about carefully. If you went to see a movie on Tuesday you can’t remember the name of it by Sunday. But you do remember you went to see a movie, right?

Yes, and I can recall that it was a good movie, and certain scenes like drawing pictures of little animals, became a series of children’s books, woman writer, she bought farms and bequeathed them to the National Trust.

Beatrix Potter.

That’s it. Movie was called Miss Potter. Oh, I feel so foolish sometimes. I feel I should retire to the sidelines of a conversation. That’s what happens to old people. People talk to them differently. Like only talking to children about certain subjects.

Think of it as a natural process. When you are young you record events and their details in the events section of memory. You use those events to generalize and this governs your behavior. These generalizations and patterns of behavior become your semantic memory. As you get older the semantic memory gets bigger. It doesn’t need all those events to make new generalizations. The character becomes more fixed.

Unkindly put, more inflexible? So how do we keep changing, remain positive, stay fresh?

Maintain curiosity, keep an open mind, observe, do puzzles, be less judgemental, don’t leap to conclusions.

I still want to remember names for faces, and places where something happened.

So take up writing a journal, or drawing.