Case Studies HM, KF, Clive Wearing

Question 1

Why psycholgist use case studies in cognitive?

Answer 1

• help and give GREATER understand memory
• uses quantitave and qualitative data
• in-depth investigations

Question 2

What was the accident that lead to damange to patient HM?

Answer 2

accident that craked his skull

Question 3

What did Patient HM experience after the accident?

Answer 3

1) seizures
2) black out
3) bodily functions
4) dropped out of high school due to frequent episodes

Question 4

Why is the hippocampus important?

Answer 4

• part of limbic system which is associate with emotions
• it consolidates memory from STM to LTM
  1) sensory neurons transcribed in cortex travels to the hippocampus to strength the connection by transfering it back to the cortext for permanent storage
  2) to transfer you remember and practice

Question 5

What happend when you remove the hippocampus?

Answer 5

• lose memory from past decade or so
• unable to from new memories e.g. forgetting the day
• LTM damanged
• STM intact

Question 6

What happned to patient HM after the brain sugery?

Answer 6

• reduced seizures
• resulted in memory loss
• lose ability to make new memories e.g. not store memory of new names, faces, events etc
• ## able to learn new skills (procedural) but had no memory of learning them

Question 7

What was the quantitative and qualitative data gathered for patient HM?

Answer 7

• tracing routes through mazes on paper
• drawing/tracing five pointed star
• brain scanning
• ## interviews to gain in-depth information about thoughts and feelings

Question 8

What qualitative in-depth infomation did psychologist gathered in patient’s HM interview?

Answer 8

• able to describe his childhood but lack context e.g. how long ago they happened
• can’t explain where he lived or cared for him

Question 9

What did clive wearing suffered?

Answer 9

• Suffered Long-term memory impairment
• had encephalitis = imflammation to structures of brain
• Short-term memory intact

Question 10

Why patient HM and Clive Wearing are important to cognitive psychology?

Answer 10

• both had STM intact and LTM impaired
• unable to transfer STM to LTM
• demonstrated STM and LTM stores exist and and are located in different brain reigions

Question 11

What did paitent KF suffered?

Answer 11

• suffered from brain damance due to motorcycle accident
• damage to STM
• struggled to process verbal information
• visual memory was unaffected

Question 12

Why is patient KF important to cognitive psychology?

Answer 12

• he had damage to STM so he struggled with verbal information but visual memory was unaffected
• shows visual information (VSSp0 is processed separately from verbal information (phonological loop)

Question 13

What are the Strengths of using case studies such as patient HM?

Answer 13

• Support theories of studies e.g. Multi-store model
• Uses variety of research methods Quantiative and Qualtitative data

Question 14

What are the Weaknesses of using case studies such as patient HM?

Answer 14

• Vunerable and unique participants
• Case studies have practical issues when conducting over a long time

Question 15

Why patient HM and Clive Wearing support cognitive theories?

Answer 15

• patient HM and Clive Wearing had their STM intact and LTM impaired

Question 16

Why using variety of reserach methods for patient HM good for psychology? And what research methods did they use on HM?

Answer 16

• uses quantitative and qualitative data
• able to compare these methods of data
• giving high overall validity
• Research methods used on HM
  IQ test,
  recall test
  brain scanning
  interviews
  tracing routes of the maze
  tracing star

Question 17

Why using unique participants such as patient HM a probelm for psychology?

Answer 17

• Patient HM is a vunerable and unique patient
• He had epilepsy when he had his head cracked affecting his brain
• Those who got their hippocampus removed may have difference in results of affecting memory because they didn’t have epilepsy
• HM took epilepsy medication before surgery
• May have affected his memory before removing the hipoocampus
• uses a small sample therefore limiting representativity and generalisability

Question 18

Why having practical issues conducted over long time such as Patient HM is a problem for psychology?

Answer 18

• gathering lots of data takes a lot of time especially qualitative data
• time consuming to compare variety of research methods and data
• this cost more than short term
• researchers may develop connection with participants therefore it’s hard to remain objective for a long time
• lowers validity

Question 19

Give an example of how case studies such as HM, KFC etc benefit society?

Answer 19

• These case studies support cognitive theory of memory
• therefore help apply e.g. dementia care to stimulate Short term and Long term