Semantic memory
type of memory referring to general world knowledge that we have accumulated throughout our lives, which is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture
Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, facts, and ideas) is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. New concepts are learned by applying knowledge gained from things in the past.
Semantic memory is distinct from episodic memory—the memory of experiences and specific events that occur in one's life that can be recreated at any given point. For instance, semantic memory might contain information about what a cat is, whereas episodic memory might contain a specific memory of stroking a particular cat.
Semantic memory and episodic memory are both types of explicit memory (or declarative memory), or memory of facts or events that can be consciously recalled and "declared". The counterpart to declarative or explicit memory is implicit memory (also known as nondeclarative memory).
History
The idea of semantic memory was first introduced following a conference in 1972 between Endel Tulving and W. Donaldson on the role of organization in human memory. Tulving constructed a proposal to distinguish between episodic memory and what he termed semantic memory. He was mainly influenced by the ideas of Reiff and Scheerer, who in 1959 made the distinction between two primary forms of memory.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18650. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Semantic memory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.