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Aging and Semantic Memory

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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology

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Synonyms

Conceptual knowledge; General knowledge base; Semantic network

Semantic memory is postulated to be our mental repository of facts, their relationships, and their meanings – knowledge about the world independent of personal identity or past (Tulving 1972). In Tulving’s conceptual framework, semantic memory stands in contrast to episodic memory, which represents information about personally experienced events and when they occurred. As an example, the knowledge we have about pancakes (a common breakfast item; coming in buttermilk, blueberry, or Swedish varieties; served warm, perhaps with syrup; etc.) would reside in semantic memory. Whether we had pancakes for breakfast yesterday morning, and if so, how many and of what style, or simply whether we had seen pancakeon a word list would all be time-tagged episodic memories. Generally speaking, information in semantic and episodic memory is said to constitute declarative memory, material we are able to express verbally, and...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology and Child Development Department, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA

    Gary D. Laver

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  1. Gary D. Laver
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Correspondence to Gary D. Laver .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Nancy A. Pachana

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© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

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Laver, G.D. (2017). Aging and Semantic Memory. In: Pachana, N.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geropsychology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-082-7_233

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