Cognitive psychological and neuroscientific studies on memory for time are reviewed in terms of the distinction between "distance-based" and "location based" processes (Friedman, 1993; 1996). Distance-based processes in judging when an event occurred involve estimating the amount of time that has elapsed between the event and the present. These distance-based processes are relatively intuitive or automatic. Location-based processes, which are strategic reconstruction processes, involve relating events to particular time patterns: conventional patterns (e.g. parts of a day or parts of the year), personal patterns (e.g., when l was in college), or patterns produced inex periments (e.g., trial block 1, 2). Location-based processes, that is, how memory for time is retrieved as a part of contextual information, have been well examined so far. On the other hand, distance-based processes have not yet been elaborated because there are few temporal memory retrieval paradigms where participants' responses mainly rely on the processes. People usually answer the question about time mainly on location-based processes when both processes are available, because they believe that distance-based judgments are more often inaccurate.
This article covers both memory for time which is examined in the laboratory and which has been already established in every day life. In laboratory experiments, the mechanism for retrieval of temporal information with in relatively short time scale of seconds to minutes has been examined using various tasks such as recency judgment, list discrimination, and order reconstruction for patients with neuropathological changes as well as healthy normals. In contrast, only few neuropsychological or neuroimaging studies have tested time retrieval processes in studies on auto biographical memory. Finally, the relation between recognition familiarity and the feeling of recency is considered, with pointing out the importance of biases in errors or "false" recency to clarify the mechanism of "feeling of recency". It should be examined whether familiarity/novelty and recency/remoteness are different measurements of the same mental representation.
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