CS Tulving’s Memory Study

Question 1

What is the aim of tulvings gold memory study

Answer 1

To investigate whether episodic memories produced different blood flow from semantic memories.

Question 2

Method of tulving’s gold study

Answer 2

Six participants were injected with radioactive gold.
Repeated measures design, each participants did:

Four episodic trials – thought of personal experiences.

Four semantic trials – thought of facts.
Blood flow in the brain was monitored on a PET scan

Question 3

Results of tulvings gold study

Answer 3

Different blood flow patterns found in three out of six participants.
Semantic memories created a greater concentration of blood flow in the posterior cortex.
Episodic memories created greater flow in the frontal lobe.

Question 4

Conclusion of tulvings gold study

Answer 4

Episodic and semantic memories are localised in different parts of the brain.
Memory has a biological basis.

Question 5

State a strength of tulvings gold study

Answer 5

A strength is that the study produced objective, scientific evidence.
It used evidence from brain scans that is difficult to fake, unlike other psychological investigations in labs, where participants may work out the aims of the study and change behaviour so they’re not acting genuinely. Assuming the participant were thinking of the things they were told to think about it would be impossible for them to influence or ‘fake’ the brain scan.
This means that Tulving produced unbiased evidence.

Question 6

State 2 weaknesses of tulvings gold study

Answer 6

A weakness is that the sample was restricted.
Only six participants including Tulving were used and differences in blood flow for episodic and semantic memories were seen in only three participants. Therefore the data is inconclusive because so few people showed the same pattern of blood flow
This means it’s difficult to generalise the results to everyone.

A weakness is that episodic and semantic memories are often very similar.
Memories for personal events also contain facts and knowledge about the world so it is difficult to work out which type of memory is being studied. E.g in the tulvings study Dave remembered when his dad broke his collar bone on Blackpool beach, but is that a fact or a event because he remembered how he felt like an episodic memory but also the time of the day and how far he was from pleasure beach (which sounds like a semantic fact)
This may explain why the evidence from Tulving’s study was inconclusive.