Investigating the retrieval of recent and remote autobiographical memories

The retrieval of recent autobiographical memories was found to be faster than remote autobiographical memories. This finding was explained in terms of the temporal region in which the search for a specific memory was conducted. For recent memories (i.e., memories of events occurring in the previous year), the temporal region was much smaller than the time period for remote memories (i.e., almost the whole past of a person), thus resulting in faster access into the knowledge base for recent than remote memories. The faster retrieval for recent memories was observed as the recent memories are more available and easily accessible from the autobiographical knowledge base. Recent memories were found to be associated with either no lifetime period, or a different type of time period, thus suggesting the likelihood of having a different knowledge bast for recent memories.