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Comparing Semantic Memory And Episodic Memory

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Long term memory is the storage of memories over a long period of time. These memories are usually stored permanently and can be retrieved whenever necessary, usually aided by retrieval cues (Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W., 1995). Two key features of long term memory are episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory is related to memories of events that have happened in someone’s life, for example remembering your first day of school, whereas semantic memory is related to general knowledge and facts as well as helping us understand words and objects (Lee, A. C. H., Robbins, T. W., Graham, K. S., & Owen, A. M., 2002) for example knowing that London is the capital of England. Semantic and episodic memory have similarities as they are both categorised …show more content…

B. (1989) suggested that there is developmental differences between episodic and semantic memory by testing young participants aged 18 to 32 against older participants aged 63 to 80. Episodic memory was tested through the use of recall and semantic memory was tested by picture naming tasks. For episodic memory, the younger participants performed better however there were very few differences between the performance of participants when tested on semantic memory. The only difference being was that the older participants performed better in the condition testing vocabulary (Nyberg, L.,1996). This would suggest that these two features of long term memory, episodic and semantic, develop differently as people age and therefore they can be …show more content…

(2009) and Irish et al (2013), the evidence to suggest that episodic and semantic memory are independent of each other outweighs this idea. Brain scanning techniques have demonstrated that semantic and episodic memory are associated with different parts of the brain (Lee, A. C. et al 2002), Mitchell, D. B. (1989) suggested that there are developmental differences between the two types of memory and case studies have argued that retrieval of episodic and semantic memories are very different. All of this research has led to the theory that episodic and semantic memory can be dissociated however it cannot be overlooked that in some cases the two subtypes of declarative memory do work together and are not completely

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