05. Tulving LTM Flashcards
What did Tulving propose?
That LTM memory was divided into two memory stores:
- Episodic
- Semantic
What are procedural memories?
‘Knowing how’
A type of LTM involved in the performance of different actions and skills.
What are declarative memories?
‘Knowing that’
The conscious recollection of experiences, events and information used in everyday living.
What are episodic memories?
Episodic memories are from our life events and experiences. They are connected with when and where an event occurred and how it relates to us (remembering events from the past).
What is the AO1 for episodic memories?
-Recalling events or ‘episodes’ from our lives.
-Personal recollections, a mental diary, autobiographical memory.
-Personal events that have happened to you, ie personal experiences.
-Time stamped: you can remember when they happened and are aware of how these memories relate to other memories in time.
-Complex: Single ‘episodes’ include several elements such as people, places, objects, behaviours that are interwoven to produce a single memory.
-Time travel: as they are subjective we can think back to past events and relive them. We may not recall exact details but we are immediately aware that it is part of our personal experience.
What are semantic memories?
Semantic memories are the factual and conceptual knowledge we have abut the world such as facts, concepts and ideas.
What is the AO1 for semantic memories?
-Stored knowledge of the world, ie facts.
-General knowledge/ mental encyclopaedia/dictionary.
-Refers to meanings (meanings of words/symbols).
-Enables us to use language and contains an impressive number and range of concepts.
-Allows us to mentally represent things that are not present, ie objects, people, places.
-Facts are associated with other facts (ie school and learning/bird and nest) without being associated to autobiographical memories.
-Not time stamped, less personal, less vulnerable to distortion and forgetting than episodic.
-Constantly being added to.
Describe the supporting case study from HM that suggests semantic and episodic LTM’s are separate from each other.
-HM: After removing his hippocampus to treat his epilepsy his STM was intact but his LTM was significantly impaired- specifically his episodic LTM but not his semantic LTM.
-For example, he could not remember stroking a dog but understood the concept of a dog.
Describe the supporting case study from Clive Wearing that suggests semantic and episodic LTM’s are separate from each other.
-Suffered from viral encephalitis which damaged his hippocampus resulting in him being unable to form new memories. Explicit memories were damaged (episodic) but his semantic and implicit memories (procedural) remained.
-For example, he could not recall moments from his childhood or the names of his children but was still able to understand the concept of what a piano is and play the piano and conduct a choir.
Describe the supporting research that semantic and episodic LTM’s are separate from each other and localised to different brain regions from Ostergaard (1987).
-A 10 year old boy suffered brain damage following an anoxic episode (lack of oxygen to the brain causing injury).
-His intelligence was intact, and he did make educational progress, even though it was slow (eg his reading age progressed).
-He suffered impairment to both episodic and semantic memories, but researchers were able to determine that the impairment to his episodic memory was worse than his impairment to semantic memory.
Describe the supporting research that semantic and episodic LTM’s are separate from each other and localised to different brain regions from Schmolck et al (2002).
-Patients with damage specific to their hippocampus suffered less of their episodic memory, but not all of their semantic memory.
-This suggests that semantic and episodic LTM are encoded in different parts of the brain, with the hippocampus dealing with episodic memory and the nearby temporal cortex dealing with semantic memory.
Describe the refuting research from Squire and Zola (1998) that found one brain area was damaged but both types of long-term memories were impaired, suggests that these 2 types of LTM are not separate.
-Squire and Zola examined young children with amnesia (who had not yet acquired many semantic memories due to their age) and adults with amnesia (who had semantic and episodic memories from before suffering brain damage).
-Children and adults had damage to the medial temporal lobe. The participants’ episodic and semantic memories seem to be equally impaired.
Describe the supporting research from Belleville (2006) that demonstrated the model was useful.
-Belleville worked with older people who had a mild memory impairment. -These patients completed a training programme to improve their episodic memories.
-Compared with a control group, these patients performed better on an episodic memory test.
-This supports that semantic memory is separate as could improve it without improving semantic.
-Tulving’s theory is useful as it has good application to help older people improve their memories.
How does episodic memory link to time referencing?
Memories about events that are linked to the time in which they occurred.
How does episodic memory link to spatial referencing?
Memories are continuous as we experience an event in a temporal frame of reference.
