Annette and all, Question 1: would knowledge of abstract concepts, like 'justice' be considered semantic (declarative) memory, or nondeclarative memory?? Whereas a concrete concept, like "hat" would be clearly declarative (semantic). --I believe the clarification between semantic and declarative are not the same. According to Squire (1990? or 92) declarative has to do with hippocampal-dependent memories. To me, knowledge of justice conjours up instances of justice (e.g., Civil Rights issues) which would be hippocampal dependent to recall events. According the Tulving and Schacter (1994), justice would be semantic as long as there was not context tied to justice. Once you move to recalling a specific instance of justice, the memory would become episodic. Just to add a wrench into the system, you could also consider implicit and explicit memory. Justice could be implicit by asking if justice was apparent in a situation. If you ask for a description of when the student (or learner <g>)experienced justice it becomes explicit. I think. Or, at least what I remember. Question 2: Are repressed memories of childhood abuse part of the implicit memory system since they may affect our behavior in novel ways from the direct explicit retrieval of the information? --I think this could go either way. You could say that "no effort" was involved to retrieve these memories. However, one could say that the individual was actually seeking the memories after some sort of cue. I guess it depends on what you call effort. Rob Weisskirch Rob Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D. Department of Child and Adolescent Studies California State University, Fullerton P.O. Box 6868 Fullerton, CA 92834-6868 (714) 278-2896 http://faculty.fullerton.edu/rweisskirch
