Activity . Semantic memory , on the other hand, is the memory of general awareness and knowledge. All concepts, ideas and rules of logic are stored in semantic memory. For instance, it is because of semantic memory that we remember the meaning of say ‘non- violence’ or remember that + = or the STD code of New Delhi is or that the word ‘elaphant’ is misspelt.
Unlike episodic memory this kind of memory is not dated; you perhaps will not be able to tell when you learnt the meaning of non-violence or on which date you came to know that Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka. Since the contents of semantic memory relate to facts and ideas of general awareness and knowledge, it is affect-neutral and not susceptible to forgetting. See Box . K NOWLEDGE R EPRESENTATION AND O RGANISATION IN M EMORY In this section we will take a look at the organisational structure that the contents of long-term memory acquire over a period of time.
Since long-term memory holds a very large amount of information which is put to use with amazing efficiency, it would be very useful to know how our memory system organises its contents so that the right information is available at the right moment. It is important to note at this point that many ideas relating to organisation of the content of long-term memory have resulted from experiments that have employed semantic retrieval tasks. You will perhaps agree that there cannot be any error in recalling the contents of semantic memory. For anyone who knows that birds fly will not make a mistake in answering a question — Do birds fly?
The answer will be in affirmative. But people may take variable lengths of time in answering questions, which require semantic judgments. While responding to question ‘Do birds fly?’ a person will take not more than a second but answering a question ‘Are birds animals’? may take longer.
Depending upon how much time people take in responding to questions such as these, the nature of organisation in long- term memory has been inferred.