Altering access to autobiographical episodes with prior semantic knowledge

Sheldon, Signy, Peters, Sarah and Renoult, Louis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7861-0552 (2020) Altering access to autobiographical episodes with prior semantic knowledge. Consciousness and Cognition, 86. ISSN 1053-8100

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Abstract

Within autobiographical knowledge, semantic and episodic memory are traditionally considered separate, but newer models place them along a continuum, which raises the possibility of an intermediate form of knowledge - personal semantics. This study tested how different types of semantics – general semantics and two forms of personal semantics – impact access to personal episodic memories. In two experiments, participants made a series of true/false judgments about a prime statement, which reflected a general semantic fact, a context-dependent (e.g., repeated event) or context-independent (e.g., trait), personal semantic fact and then retrieved a specific past episodic memory. There was a significantly stronger priming effect for accessing specific episodic memories after judging personal semantic facts versus general facts. We also found that context-dependent and -independent personal semantic facts had separable priming effects on episodic memory. These findings support a continuum model of memory and verifies that there are multiple forms of personal knowledge.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 25 Nov 2020 00:50
Last Modified: 19 Jun 2023 10:32
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77789
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.103039

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