Tulving

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Endel Tulving was a Canadian cognitive psychologist known for distinguishing episodic memory from semantic memory and for his influential research on human memory
2. The surname of Endel Tulving, an Estonian-born Canadian psychologist whose theories of memory categories shaped modern cognitive psychology
3. A proper name referring to Endel Tulving, the psychologist who proposed the distinction between episodic and semantic forms of long-term memory

Etymology: Endel Tulving was an Estonian-born psychologist who spent much of his career in Canada, and his surname has become a shorthand in memory research. He argued that human memory is not one system but at least two. Episodic memory holds personal experiences, anchored to a particular time and place, such as remembering what you ate at a friend's wedding. Semantic memory holds general knowledge that is detached from when and where you learned it, such as knowing that Paris is the capital of France. Psychologists now speak of "Tulving's distinction" when they separate these two kinds of memory. The term is a surname used as a label for an idea, not a word with an origin in another language, so its history is simply the career and argument of one scientist.