Q.Distinguish between episodic memory and semantic memory, giving one example of each from your own life.

Long-term memory (LTM) is not treated as a single uniform store; because it holds such a wide variety of information, contemporary psychology classifies it into distinct types. One major classification divides long-term memory into declarative memory and procedural memory (procedural memory is also sometimes called nondeclarative memory). Within declarative memory, Tulving proposed a further split into episodic memory and semantic memory.

Declarative memory covers all information relating to facts, names, and dates — for example, knowing that a rickshaw has three wheels, that India became independent on 15 August 1947, that a frog is an amphibian, or that a friend happens to share one's own name. The defining feature of declarative memory is that it is amenable to verbal description: whatever is stored here can be stated out loud in words whenever it is needed.

Procedural memory, in contrast, covers memories relating to the procedures behind various tasks and skills, such as how to ride a bicycle, how to make tea, or how to play basketball. Unlike declarative memory, the contents of procedural memory cannot easily be described in words. A person can readily describe how the game of cricket is played (drawing on declarative knowledge of its rules), but if asked precisely how they ride a bicycle, they may find it genuinely difficult to put the skill into words — even though they can perform it perfectly well.

Within declarative memory, Tulving proposed a further, well-known classification into episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory holds the biographical, personally experienced details of a person's life, and its contents tend to be emotional in nature — how a person felt on a specific occasion, for instance. Semantic memory, by contrast, holds general knowledge and awareness of the world — concepts, ideas, rules of logic, and facts that are not tied to when or where they were learned, and which are comparatively resistant to forgetting because they represent knowledge that is widely shared rather than personally dated.

Together, these classifications show that 'remembering' is not one single ability: a person can have vivid, verbally reportable declarative knowledge of facts and personal events while simultaneously possessing skilled, largely non-verbal procedural know-how, and both types coexist within long-term memory, drawn on for very different kinds of tasks.