Semantic V. Episodic Memory

Although at first they seem quite different, differentiating semantic from episodic memory can sometimes be difficult. In fact, some things can be both episodic and semantic memory. You may be able to remember not just a fact, but an event in the past related to it. If, for example, every time you recite the alphabet, you think of the very first time you ever learned it, it is both semantic and episodic memory.

Episodic memory ties the information to when it occurred. Suppose you remember when you first learned the alphabet. If you remember the actual event, the sensory experiences of the sound of you and your classmates singing the alphabet song for the first time, that would be episodic memory. However, your knowledge of the alphabet is semantic memory when you recall it without remembering the actual incident.

Think for a minute...

What did you eat for lunch exactly one week ago? ... Did you eat all your food? ... What time was it? ... Where were you? ... With whom did you eat? ... About what did you converse?

Your answers to these questions may be a combination of episodic and semantic memory. In your semantic memory, you develop schemas, general knowledge about an object or event. Schemas are generated through experiences (Cohen, 1989, as cited in Matlin, 1998). "Eating lunch," is a likely schema that you may rely upon to provide information to answer the questions above. Sometimes these schemas cause us to remember events that never really happened, because they fit in well with our schema (Neisser, 1988, as cited in Matlin, 1998). If events happens repeatedly, individual occurences may be blurred together and indistinguishable (Neisser, 1988, as cited in Matlin, 1998).

Some researchers see the need to differentiate these two types of memory because they have the same effects and semantic memory seems to be an accumalation of episodic events. (Craik, 1985; McKoon, Ratcliff, & Dell, 1986)