Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

Exploring Diversity:
Are There Cross-
Cultural Diff erences in Memory?
Forgetting: When Memory Fails
Why We Forget
Proactive and Retroactive Interference: 
The Before and After of Forgetting
Memory Dysfunctions: Affl
ictions 
of Forgetting
Neuroscience in Your Life:
Alzheimer’s 
Disease and Brain Deterioration
Becoming an Informed Consumer of 
Psychology:
Improving Your Memory
What causes diffi
culties and failures in 
remembering?
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Prologue
 Remembering It All 
Meet Jill Price at one of her favorite Los Angeles restaurants, and 
she’ll scoot into a booth and start to reminisce. “On Wednesday, 
December 11, 1996, my friend and I came here hunting for the 
perfect crab cake,” she says. She also remembers Saturday, 
November 4, 1995 (she saw on TV that Israeli Prime Minister 
Yitzhak Rabin was killed) and Friday, September 20, 1985 (her fi rst 
visit to the eatery; she wore a large hat). “It’s all fl ashing through 
my head,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m totally in the moment. 
I just have a split screen of my past, too.” 
What Price, 42, has is the fi rst-ever diagnosed case of highly 
superior autobiographical memory, which forces her to recall 
every day of her life from the age of 14. Given a date, she can tell 
you on what day of the week it fell, what she did and any 
historical event she heard of that day. “It’s like I walk around with 
a video camera,” says Price. “My memories are nonstop and 
involuntary.” (Perry, 2008, p. 143)