Episodic And Semantic Flashcards
What does E+S explain?
LTM theory
Episodic memory
Memory of particular events and specific information: events, names and dates. It includes memories of things that have happened to you and information like a person’s address.
Episodic memories seem to be time and spatially encoded/referenced – they are linked to the 5 senses which is why they can be triggered (“cued”) by a sight or a sound or a smell.
Tulving gives examples like remembering he has an appointment with a student the next day or recalling words from a list studied earlier as well as autobiographical memories (remembering details from your own past).
Semantic memory
Memory of relationships and how things fit together. It includes the memory that you have brothers or sisters, where things are located and what they do. Semantic memory is needed for language because words have meaning – learning words in the first place involves episodic memory but once they are learned they go into the semantic store.
Tulving gives examples like knowing that summers are hot in Kathmandu and knowing that July is the month after June. These memories may be aided by time and spatial referencing but they are not needed in the way that episodic memories require them to be coded and re-called.
+supporting: godden and baddeley
participants could remember a list of words underwater better when they had learnt them underwater than when they had learnt them on land. This is evidence for spatial referencing
+other theories
This theory develops the Multi Store Memory model and explains different types of LTM
+supporting: AD and dementia
There is evidence for different types of LTM from case studies of dementia because these patients tend to lose episodic memories in order from the most recent (evidence for time referencing) and there semantic memories remain intact for longer. This suggests these must be separate
+usefulness
Helps are understanding of education and EWT
-simplistic
This theory suggests that stores of memory are separate and they don’t communicate with each other. This is potentially a simplistic view of memory and how it works.
-individual difference
This theory fails to explain why some people may have better memories than others. Deterministic.
-usefulness
This theory doesn’t have a lot of real life application and most of the studies which it is based on are artificial and lab based.
-schmolk
Went even further and found different types of Semantic memory and semantic ability. This theory may still be too reductionist
Who?
Tulving
+supporting study: ostregaard
Studied the case of a boy who had oxygen deprivation. He damaged both types of memory but then his semantic recovered whilst his semantic did not… This indicates there are two stores of memory.
-conflicting: squire and zola
Conducted brain scans and found episodic and semantic memory are both located in the medial temporal lobe which might mean that they are not separate.
