Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory

The possible empirical bases for the semantic-episodic distinction are examined. Two kinds of results are particularly relevant. The first concerns whether the same functional laws can be demonstrated for semantic as for episodic memory. Failure to demonstrate such generalities argues for the distinction, whereas success at demonstrating generalities argues against the need for such a distinction. The second kind of diagnostic result concerns whether one can demonstrate transfer between semantic and episodic memory. Failure to find transfer argues for a separation, whereas evidence for transfer argues against any real separation between the memories. A review of the literature relevant to these two criteria yields considerable evidence against the semantic-episodic distinction. Three experiments are reported that provide new evidence against the distinction. The experiments test whether learning episodic material interferes with the retrieval of semantic information. The dependent measure was the time to respond true or false to a categorization statement (e.g., "A spaniel is a dog."). Before participating in that task, subjects learned sentences that provided information about the item and category. The results indicated that the time to make the semantic judgment was affected by the item-category relation in the prior study sentences. Generally, the study effects, as well as some other findings, were correctly predicted by the ACT theory, which makes no semantic-episodic distinction. However, contrary to the ACT theory, it was found that learning additional information about a concept does not interfere with making positive semantic memory judgments and possibly facilitates.