PSYC 3610 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Autobiographical Memory, Semantic Memory, Episodic Memory
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 4 EPISODIC MEMORY
Hyperthymesia (video)
Episodic Memory
Differences Between Episodic and
Semantic Memory
Semantic Memory
Episodic Memory
Autobiographical memory is not
episodic memory
Evidence for the Episodic/Semantic
Distinction
Behavioural Evidence
Neuropsychological Evidence
Neuroimaging Evidence
Memory Processes: Encoding,
Representation, and Retrieval
Encoding in Episodic Memory
Levels of Processing
Orienting Task
Implications and Applications
Criticism of the Levels-of-
Processing Approach
Applications of Levels of
Processing
The Self-Reference Effect
Survival Processing
Generation Effect
Organization
Distinctiveness
Retrieval from Episodic Memory
Encoding Specificity
Test of the Encoding Specificity
State-Dependent Memory
Mood Congruence
Transfer-Appropriate
Processing
Inhibition in Episodic Memory
Retrieval-Induced Inhibition
Part-Set Cuing
Directed Forgetting
Prospective Memory
Studies on Prospective Memory
Summary
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Hyperthymesia (video)
• Cannot forget episodic memory – typically restricted to their lifetime
• Total recall of episodes of their lives
• Have some tendency to do things in excess
o Obsessive behaviours
• Caudate nucleus is up to 7 time bigger.
o Also involved with obsessive-compulsive disorder
Episodic Memory
• Long-term memory is also divided into systems
o Many memory researchers think we have a unique neurocognitive
system known as episodic memory, designed to encode, store, and
retrieve, the unique events of our lives.
• Unlike working memory, long-term memory systems must be able to store a
tremendous amount of information and for much longer periods of time.
o One must remember details of any particular event.
o It may also be important to remember what our emotions were and
what the outcome was.
o We must be able to retrieve this information accurately and quickly
when we need it.
• Tulving hypothesized an important difference between two functional aspects
of memory:
o Knowledge of the world – semantic memory
o Memory of personal events – episodic memory
o They differ in content of what is represented, in their personal
meaning to the individual and in the emotions they inspire.
• Tulving claimed that our brains have different systems that operate according
to different principles for these two types of memory.
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Differences Between Episodic and Semantic Memory
Characteristics
Episodic Memory
Semantic Memory
Type of information
stored
Personally experienced
events
General facts
Unit of information
Events or episodes
Facts, ideas, concepts
Mental experience
“Mental time
travel”/remembering
“Knowledge of
facts”/knowing
Neural regions/retrieval:
frontal lobe
Right prefrontal
Left prefrontal
Neural regions: temporal
lobe
Medial temporal lobes
Medial temporal lobes
Semantic Memory
• Semantic memory: the neurocognitive memory system that encodes, stores,
and retrieves information concerning knowledge of the world
• It is impersonal in that many of the facts that we store in it are detached from
our actual experience, and we may not remember when and where we
learned these facts.
• We are more likely to express semantic memory by saying “I know” rather
than “I remember”.
• We may also have semantic memory that does reference ourselves.
o E.g., knowing our birthday even though we do not remember being
born
• Semantic memories usually concern the present.
Episodic Memory
• Episodic memory: the neurocognitive memory system that encodes, stores,
and retrieves memories of our personal individual experiences
Document Summary
Semantic memory: semantic memory: the neurocognitive memory system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information concerning knowledge of the world. Episodic memory: episodic memory: the neurocognitive memory system that encodes, stores, and retrieves memories of our personal individual experiences. However, r judgments (remember)are much more common for meaning-based learning than for visual-based learning: remember judgments are more associated with time and place, consistent with episodic memory view. Memory processes: encoding, representation, and retrieval: encoding: the learning process, representation: storage on information when not in use. 7: retrieval: activation of information from long-term memory and access it when needed, availability and accessibility of information. Incidental learning: people encode not by actively trying to remember but rather as a by-product of perceiving and understanding the world: the individual"s goal is to understand speech, interact with others, etc. In the experiments, participants were first asked a question (orienting tasks).
