Time, Language, and Autobiographical Memory

Life themes, general events, and event‐specific episodes, together with autobiographical knowledge, form autobiographical memory. Each of these memory structures is described, and research that has investigated the storage and retrieval of temporal information for life events, such as place in time, duration, and order, is examined. The general conclusion across all autobiographical memory structures is that very little temporal information is stored in memory. Retrieval of temporal information generally involves constructive processes that use landmark events, distance‐based information, life scripts, and general event scripts. The link between these constructive processes and the use of language to express temporal information in autobiographical event narratives is discussed.