160 • CHAPTER 6 Long-Term Memory: Structure
in class as you were learning these facts, you are having an episodic memory, and if you
remember the facts about the House and Senate, you are having a semantic memory.
Many years later, in college, you probably still know the difference between the
Senate and the House of Representatives (your semantic memory is still present), but it
is unlikely that you remember what was happening on the specifi c day you were sitting
in class in the sixth grade learning about the U.S. government (your episodic memory
for that event has been lost). As this example illustrates, the knowledge that makes up
semantic memories is initially attained through a personal experience that could be the
basis of an episodic memory, but memory for this experience often fades, leaving only
semantic memory.
Another example of “morphing” from episodic plus semantic to only semantic
memory is provided by important personal experiences such as graduating from high
school. This is an important event in many people’s lives, and one that they may remem-
ber for many years. It is likely that many readers of this book can clearly place them-
selves at their high school graduation and so still have episodic memories for this event.
However, memory for many of the details of this event may fade over the years, until
many years later, not enough of the details remain to achieve the mental time travel
required for episodic memory (as in the case of your author, who graduated from high
school earlier in the last century!). Nonetheless, semantic memory remains if people
know the year they graduated, the high school they graduated from, and other facts
associated with their graduation.Semantic Memory Can Be Enhanced If Associated With Episodic Memory Another
connection between semantic and episodic memories is that semantic memories that
have personal signifi cance are easier to remember than semantic memories that are not
personally signifi cant. For example, knowledge about the facts associated with your
high school graduation would be personally signifi cant semantic memories because
your high school graduation has personal signifi cance for you. Robyn Westmacott and
Morris Moscovitch (2003) showed that participants have better recall for names of
public fi gures, such as actors, singers, and politicians, whom they associate with per-
sonal experiences. For example, you would be more likely to recall the name of a
popular singer in a memory test if you had attended one of
his or her concerts than if you had just read about the singer
in magazines.Semantic Memory Can Infl uence Our Experience by
Infl uencing Attention Consider this situation: Steven and
Troy are watching a football game. The quarterback takes
the snap, is rushed hard, and fl ips the ball over the oncom-
ing linemen for a completion. Later, Troy remembers the
details of the play, which was a pass over the left side, but
the play doesn’t stand out for Steven. Troy remembers the
play because his semantic memory, which contains a large
amount of knowledge about football, caused him to direct
his attention to what various players were doing as the play
unfolded. Thus, Troy’s detailed semantic memory about the
various types of plays in football helped direct his attention,
and he formed memories about specifi c plays. In contrast,
Steven observed the game differently because of his sparse
knowledge of football, so he just remembers that there were
running plays and passing plays (● Figure 6.9).
The research on chess experts described in Chapter 5
(see page 127) also illustrates how semantic memory can
infl uence how people allocate their attention. Remember
that the experts had better memory for the positions of
chess pieces because of their ability to group pieces together
in chunks based on the experts’ semantic memory for the● (^) FIGURE 6.9 A person’s knowledge can infl uence episodic
memory. Even though two people have seen the same football
game, they remember diff erent things about it because of their
diff ering knowledge of football.
I remember
a football game.
I remember the pass
over the left side on third
and 10!
Low knowledge of football
They both saw the same game!
High knowledge of football
Semantic knowledge can influence formation of episodic memory
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