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Memories - how they work
Feb. 28th, 2008 10:31 pmDisclaimer: I'm not by any means a cognitive psychology person.
I have been reading about semantic vs. episodic memory. Semantic memory refers to memory of facts about things. I had figured the distinction would be that semantic memory is about intrinsic, categorical properties, and that episodic memory would be about sequences of information, that is, stories or narratives. But no, that isn't it. Episodic memory also requires a phenomenological sense of presence in the story, such that a key distinction between the two kinds is remembering (episodic) vs. knowing (semantic). Meanwhile, it appears that the schemas (or underlying basic structures) for (not personally experienced) stories go into semantic memory, which I suppose makes sense, but what about story content? So I obviously have more to learn.
One thing that's interesting is that they don't yet know how the feeling of recognition and familiarity that comes with remembering something gets attached to the information that's remembered. It can't be there to be stored along with the information at the time it's encoded (stored in the brain), because at that time it's got a feeling of novelty attached to it instead. The feeling of novelty has to get detached, and the feeling of recognition and familiarity substituted in its place. ("Déjà vu" happens when that feeling of recognition pops up inappropriately.) Hmm.
I have been reading about semantic vs. episodic memory. Semantic memory refers to memory of facts about things. I had figured the distinction would be that semantic memory is about intrinsic, categorical properties, and that episodic memory would be about sequences of information, that is, stories or narratives. But no, that isn't it. Episodic memory also requires a phenomenological sense of presence in the story, such that a key distinction between the two kinds is remembering (episodic) vs. knowing (semantic). Meanwhile, it appears that the schemas (or underlying basic structures) for (not personally experienced) stories go into semantic memory, which I suppose makes sense, but what about story content? So I obviously have more to learn.
One thing that's interesting is that they don't yet know how the feeling of recognition and familiarity that comes with remembering something gets attached to the information that's remembered. It can't be there to be stored along with the information at the time it's encoded (stored in the brain), because at that time it's got a feeling of novelty attached to it instead. The feeling of novelty has to get detached, and the feeling of recognition and familiarity substituted in its place. ("Déjà vu" happens when that feeling of recognition pops up inappropriately.) Hmm.