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Concept
Semantic memory
Summary
Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. New concepts are learned by applying knowledge learned from things in the past.
Semantic memory is distinct from episodic memory—the memory of experiences and specific events that occur in one's life that can be recreated at any given point. For instance, semantic memory might contain information about what a cat is, whereas episodic memory might contain a specific memory of stroking a particular cat.
Semantic memory and episodic memory are both types of explicit memory (or declarative memory), or memory of facts or events that can be consciously recalled and "declared". The counterpart to declarative or explicit memory is implicit memory (also known as nondeclarative memory).
The idea of semantic memory was first introduced following a conference in 1972 between Endel Tulving and W. Donaldson on the role of organization in human memory. Tulving constructed a proposal to distinguish between episodic memory and what he termed semantic memory. He was mainly influenced by the ideas of Reiff and Scheers, who in 1959 made the distinction between two primary forms of memory. One form was entitled remembrances, and the other memoria. The remembrance concept dealt with memories that contained experiences of an autobiographic index, whereas the memoria concept dealt with memories that did not reference experiences having an autobiographic index. Semantic memory reflects the knowledge of the world, and the term general knowledge is often used. It holds generic information that is more than likely acquired across various contexts and is used across different situations. According to Madigan in his book titled Memory, semantic memory is the sum of all knowledge one has obtained—vocabulary, understanding of math, or all the facts one knows.
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