Psychonomics 2019, Symposium II: 'Re-organizing our Understanding of Semantic and Episodic Memory'

Co-Chaired by Louis Renoult (University of East Anglia, UK) and Signy Sheldon (McGill University, Canada)

Traditional models of memory describe semantic and episodic memory as independent entities within long-term memory, which has led to studying them as separate memory systems. Contemporary research has begun to document several scenarios in which semantic and episodic memory necessarily interact, ranging from learning new information, retrieving past memories and making effective decisions. These findings raise new questions about how long-term memory is organised and whether semantic and episodic memory are truly independent systems. In the current symposium, we will present developments on the scenarios under which semantic and episodic memory interact to reveal new insights into the underlying cognitive and neural architecture of long-term memory. The integration of these findings provides new theoretical models of the organisation of memory to direct future research.