Love - Language and Memory Paper - Essay Example

Memory, one of the most intriguing components of the human psyche, have been studied and even subcategorized by countless scholars throughout the decades. Among the most notable theories of its categories is the issue regarding semantic memory and it link to language production. Several questions can be deliberated when looking upon this specific interaction of memory and language. Is memory, more specifically semantic memory, the sole reference with which language is formed and structured?

How does semantic memory affect the production of language? More importantly, will language be able to survive without semantic memory? And is it possible that both language and semantic memory dependently coexists in some aspects? This article will try to detail the important facets of language and its relationship with semantic memory. Before we delve into the dynamics of language and semantic memory, let us first define the psychological concept that is memory. Memory can be described as “the capacity that permits organisms to benefit from their past experiences.

”(Tulving, 1985, p.385). Procedural memory enables organisms to retain learned connection between stimuli and responses including those involving complex stimulus patterns and response chains, and to respond adaptively to the environment. Semantic memory is characterized by the additional capability of internally representing states of the world that are not perceptually present. Episodic memory affords the additional capability of acquisition and retention of knowledge about personally experienced events and their temporal relations in subjective time and ability to mentally “travel back” in time. (p.386).

Memory is made up of a number of interrelated systems, organized structures of operating components consisting of neural substances and their behavioural and cognitive correlates. A ternary classificatory scheme of memory is proposed in which procedural, semantic, and episodic memory