Episodic vs Semantic Memory

Endel Tulving declared the distinctiveness between the two forms of long term memories in 1972. Tulving believed that semantic memory was long-term collection of generalized knowledge, while episodic was the knowledge we have stored long-term from major things that have taken place in our liveshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/. When telling a story, semantic memory would be the process of remembering the words involved in the event - the language. For example, let's say yesterday I went sky diving. When I tell you "hey yesterday I jumped from a plane", my remembering of the word plane is semantic memory in the works. Recalling the event of sky diving as a whole, as an experience, is episodic memory. There has been evidence that people with brain injuries also suffer from memory loss, but this can differ depending on what part of their brain is effected, some people never recover their ability to remember any events that occur to them after the accidenthttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2952732/. Tulver's theory implies that "Similarly, episodic memories facilitate the retrieval of information from semantic memory, and semantic memories are the basic material from which complex and detailed episodic memories are constructed".
Another distinction between the two forms of memory is their application - episodic is how we relate information that involves us, while semantic memory may include the facts we memorized for our history test three years ago that we still happen to rememberhttps://www.memorylosstest.com/episodic-semantic-memory-examples/. Semantic memory is heavily involving recalling a fact, while episodic can be brought about by an emotional experience as well. The emotions are what set episodic apart from semantic, as semantic information is often not related to our experiences in an emotional way but are general knowledge facts that we should know depending on the culture or society we grew up in. Recalling a traumatic event is an example of episodic memory retention and recall.
Category:Memory