General Knowledge

Note: This portion of our site is still under construction. Check back soon for new content. In the meantime, you can look at other sections of the site. At present, the section on Perceptual Processes is most nearly complete. Or you can view the design document for the Thinker site [PDF, 158 KB].

General knowledge refers to the entire platform of ideas that we have in our minds. This can include:

• memories of our experiences (what we call episodic memories),
• knowledge of how to do something (procedural knowledge),
• and our set of facts and information (semantic knowledge).

Although these different pieces of knowledge that we have are distinct, they also are related. Much of the time, when we think of one idea, that idea leads to another. To experience how this process might work, see the Basic Network Model.

When we have entire packages of information (such as everything related to, say, "birthdays" or "basketball"), these packages are called schemas. You can see some of the effects of schemas in the demo Schemas & Memory.