Personal Narrative: Personal Semantic Memory

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My interest in psychology piqued from a young age. Ever since I was little, I had always paid close attention to people’s behaviors, moods, and interactions which would in turn cause me to think; what happened that caused them to elicit those emotions and thoughts? This habit would actually come in handy several times later in life unbeknownst to my younger self. I was having a conversation with my grandmother about the final book in the Harry Potter series, which had just been released in the summer of 2007. She had bought it for me as one of my birthday presents and we were discussing our thoughts on J.K. Rowling’s ending of the series. As I was explaining what I thought of the book, I referenced several parts of the story. The first …show more content…

This knowledge is what makes me assume that she had semantic dementia. While she was able to remember experiences, such as my past birthday parties, she was unable to remember what she had bought me for gifts, like the final Harry Potter book. The inability to retrieve that kind of information is also an example of how she started to forget what is known as autobiographical memory, the combination of both semantic and episodic memory, especially the semantic portion of those memories, which are known as personal semantic memories. An example of a personal semantic memory is the book that she had bought me for my birthday. After learning and seeing how Clive Wearing interacted with other people this interaction struck me as quite similar, but of course much worse than what my grandma had experienced. While he was completely unable to create long term memories she was still able to recall some things, such as our visit for Christmas. Both semantic and autobiographical memory are stored in long term memory and not short term memory. This helps to explain why she was able to have full conversations with me and yet not be able to remember them

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