Brain Damaged Patients and Alternative Explanations

Question 1

HM?

Answer 1

suffered amnesia after brain surgery for epilepsy, impaired LTM but STM was fine - demonstrates different stores.

Question 2

Clive Wearing?

Answer 2

suffered ltm impairment but stm was unaffected, couldn’t transfer from stm to ltm, highlights reductionism as he could play the piano - procedural memory

Question 3

KC?

Answer 3

Could recall facts but couldn’t remember personal events, highlights episodic and semantic memory

Question 4

Serial position effect?

Answer 4

Glanzer and Cunitz 1966 supports separate stores

Question 5

Baddeley 1966b

Answer 5

Supports the fact that there are separate stores as they encode differently

Question 6

Craik and Lockhart 1972

Answer 6

Alternative explanation for transferral from stm to ltm, different levels of processing; structural, phonemic and semantic - the greater depth of processing, the stronger the memory trace

Question 7

What damage had HM had to his brain?

Answer 7

Head injury which led to epilespy. Had hippocampus removed from temporal lobe to stop his seizures.

Question 8

What shows HM had procedural memory?

Answer 8

He was taught to play tennis after his operation but although he couldn’t remember learning it, he could still play it

Question 9

How was HM’s STM impaired?

Answer 9

He couldn’t form new memories but could remember events like his childhood. He could not remember anything in the 11 years before his operation.

Question 10

What evidence is there that HM had semantic memory?

Answer 10

He had good language skills and above average IQ

Question 11

What does the case study of HM suggest about the hippocampus?

Answer 11

That it is associated with STM as after having it removed, HM couldn’t form new memories

Question 12

What is a case study?

Answer 12

An in depth study of a uniqueindividual, group or event. It is usually unethical to set up otherwise and is often a longitudinal study involving triangulation.

Question 13

How are case studies ideographic?

Answer 13

They don’t test a hypothesis or try to build general laws to generalise to wider population

Question 14

How was KC support the episodic and semantic stores?

Answer 14

He could recall facts but not personal events

Question 15

How are case studies of brain damaged patients high in validity?

Answer 15

They are rich and in depth about the feelings and experiences of the sufferers and the participant tends to act naturally as they build a relationship with the researcher

Question 16

How do case studies of brain damaged patients lack generalisability?

Answer 16

They focus on the brain damage of one individual and could not be generalised as another individual wouldn’t have had the exact same damage

Question 17

How do case studies of brain damaged patients lack reliability?

Answer 17

They involve qualitative data so the interpretation is subjective as another researcher may interpret their experience differently

Question 18

How can case studies of brain damaged patients be unethical?

Answer 18

They involve talking about a traumatic event and it can be traumatic for them to not remember their family, also issues with overtesting

Question 19

What application do the case studies have?

Answer 19

They help understand the different memory stores