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 gained 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).
History 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 Scheerer, who in 1959 made the distinction between two primary forms of memory. One form was titled 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. In his book titled Episodic and Semantic Memory, Tulving adopted the term semantic from linguists to refer to a system of memory for "words and verbal symbols, their meanings and referents, the relations between them, and the rules, formulas, or algorithms for influencing them". The use of semantic memory differs from episodic memory: semantic memory refers to general facts and meanings one shares with others, while episodic memory refers to unique and concrete personal experiences. Tulving's proposal of this distinction was widely accepted, primarily because it allowed the separate conceptualization of world knowledge. Tulving discusses conceptions of episodic and semantic memory in his book titled Précis of Elements of Episodic Memory, in which he states that several factors differentiate between episodic memory and semantic memory in ways that include
the characteristics of their operations, the kind of information they process, and their application to the real world as well as the memory laboratory. In 2022, researchers Felipe De Brigard, Sharda Umanath, and Muireann Irish argued that Tulving conceptualized semantic memory to be different from episodic memory in that "episodic memories were viewed as supported via spatiotemporal relations while information in semantic memory was mediated through conceptual, meaning-based associations". Recent research has focused on the idea that when people access a word's meaning, sensorimotor information that is used to perceive and act on the concrete object the word suggests is automatically activated. In the theory of grounded cognition, the meaning of a particular word is grounded in the sensorimotor systems. For example, when one thinks of a pear, knowledge of grasping, chewing, sights, sounds, and tastes used to encode episodic experiences of a pear are recalled through sensorimotor simulation. A grounded simulation approach refers to context-specific re-activations that integrate the important features of episodic experience into a current depiction. Such research has challenged previously utilized amodal views. The brain encodes multiple inputs such as words and pictures to integrate and create a larger conceptual idea by using amodal views (also known as amodal perception). Instead of being representations in modality-specific systems, semantic memory representations had previously been viewed as redescriptions of modality-specific states. Some accounts of category-specific semantic deficits that are amodal remain even though researchers are beginning to find support for theories in which knowledge is tied to modality-specific brain regions. The concept that semantic representations are grounded across modality-specific brain regions can be supported by episodic and semantic memory appearing to function in different yet mutually dependent ways. The distinction between semantic and episodic memory has become a part of the broader scientific discourse. For example, researchers speculate that semantic memory captures the stable aspects of our personality while episodes of illness may have a more episodic nature.
Empirical evidence
Jacoby and Dallas (1981) This study was not created to solely provide evidence for the distinction of semantic and episodic memory stores. However, they did use the experimental dissociation method which provides evidence for Tulving's hypothesis. In the first part, subjects were presented with a total of 60 words (one at a time) and were asked different questions.
Some questions asked were to cause the subject to pay attention to the visual appearance: Is the word typed in bold letters? Some questions caused the participants to pay attention to the sound of the word: Does the word rhyme with ball? Some questions caused the subjects to pay attention to the meaning of the word: Does the word refer to a form of communication? Half of the questions were "no" answers and the other half "yes" In the second phase of the experiment, 60 "old words" seen in stage one and 20 "new words" not shown in stage one were presented to the subjects one at a time. The subjects were given one of two tasks:
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