The Annual Birthday Party: Remembering Recurring Events from One's Past

Abstract The paper focuses on the particular nature of the content of so-called generic memories, especially those of recurrent events from one's past. This way of remembering has two central features that seem to be in tension with each other: what is mentally represented seems to be both rather specific, as one typically simulates an event with audiovisual properties, and rather non-specific, as the represented event covers or represents a series of more or less similar past events. It is argued that the phenomenon can be adequately described as a mental state representing a personal event prototype. This description also allows for the dynamic process of remembering, in which different forms of personal remembering may come to the fore depending on the context.