Concepts · Humans and machines
How memory vocabulary describes recency, temporal context, mental time travel, sequence, duration, and continuity.
Memory and Time
Memory is one of the main ways a system relates to time. It preserves what happened, orders events, supports expectations, carries intentions forward, and lets past experience shape future behavior.
Core terms: temporal continuity, temporal context, temporal order memory, temporal binding, temporal cue, temporal decay, temporal distance, temporal drift, temporal landmark, temporal tagging, time perception, time horizon, timeline memory, recency effect, recency bias, primacy effect, serial position effect, spacing effect, lag effect, retention interval, retention curve, forgetting curve, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, retrospective memory, prospective memory, future memory, chronesthesia, mental time travel, autonoetic consciousness, duration memory, event memory, event segmentation, event boundary, sequence memory, session memory, working-session memory, timestamp.
Terms that change meaning across fields: continuity, context, sequence, recency, history, future, event, horizon, timeline.
Return to the Canonical Memory Glossary.