knowledge

Meaning: In cognitive psychology, knowledge is information held in long-term memory that a person can use in thinking and behavior. Declarative (explicit) knowledge is knowing that: facts (semantic memory) and personal events (episodic memory), which can be consciously recalled and stated. Procedural (implicit) knowledge is knowing how: skills such as riding a bike, which are often hard to put into words. Knowledge is organized into schemas that guide what we notice, how we interpret new input, and what we remember. In Piaget's terms, assimilation fits new information into an existing schema, and accommodation changes the schema. In the study of intelligence, crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge, and it tends to hold up with age better than fluid intelligence.

On the MCAT: A passage often describes a patient or experiment in which one kind of memory is impaired and another is spared, for example a person who cannot recall new facts but improves at a mirror-tracing task. You classify each as declarative or procedural and link it to the brain: the hippocampus is central to forming new explicit memories, while the cerebellum and basal ganglia are tied to procedural learning. Questions also use schemas to explain biased recall or interpretation.

Common confusion: Students assume that losing the ability to recall facts means losing skills. Procedural knowledge can be used without conscious recall, so it often survives when explicit memory fails. Also separate semantic ("Paris is the capital of France") from episodic ("my trip to Paris").