Episodic Memory

Episodic Memory in Educational Psychology

Specific attempts by educational psychologists to study episodic memory have been relatively rare. This [Page 349]is surprising in that there are some intuitive applications of episodic memory research that those in the education field may find potentially valuable. Although it seems plausible that more advanced knowledge of the application of episodic memory research to education domains might allow for the development of educational curricula that students are more likely to remember, little research has been performed on this idea to date. Recently, some psychologists have argued that an increased emphasis on episodic memory in educational psychology could lead to curricula specifically designed to make it more likely that students remember teaching and learning experiences. Exploration of the intersection between these two active research areas may prove to be a productive avenue for future research.

History of the Concept

In 1972, Endel Tulving proposed a distinction between episodic memory and semantic memory (the memory system responsible for storing facts and general knowledge regarding the way the world works). In his framework, however, episodic memory is not truly independent of semantic memory but rather is a subsystem that is highly dependent on semantic memory.

To help operationalize the differences between episodic memory and other forms of memory, Tulving proposed that we have two ways of accessing the events from our past: remembering and knowing. In Tulving's conceptualization, we ‘remember’ a piece of information from the past when the information is accompanied by the conscious recall of specific details associated with original experience of the information. In contrast, we sometimes remember information from the past but have no conscious recollection of any details about how we learned the information. Tulving referred to this type of access to the past as ‘knowing.’

...