evaluation of the types of long term memory Flashcards
what does it mean when we say that the different types of LTM have clinical evidence
the famous case studies of HM ( Henry Molaison) and Clive Wearing, CW, are relevant here
HM and CW had great difficulty recalling events that had happened to them in their pasts ( EPISODIC MEMORY) but their semantic memories were relatively unaffected e.g. they understood the meaning of words
So HM world was not able to recall stroking a dog half an hour earlier and could not remember owning a dog but he would not need to have the concept of”dog” explained to him over and over again (SEMANTIC MEMORY WAS INTACT)
Their procedural memory was also intact - both knew how to tie shoelaces, how to walk and speaker and in CW case, he could still sing and play the piano ( he was a professional musician)
This shows how there are different memory stores in LTM - one store can be damaged but other stores can bee unaffected.
Furthermore, this is clear evidence that there are not only different types of memory stores but they are stored in different parts of the brain
what does it mean when we say that the different types of LTM have neuroimaging evidence
there is evidence from brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain
Tulving et al (1994) got their participants to perform various memory tasks while their brains were scanned using a PET scanner
FINDINGS:
episodic and semantic memories were recalled from an area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex.
This area is divided into 2, one on each side ( or hemisphere)
The left prefrontal cortex was involved in recalling semantic memories and the right was for episodic
This shows that there is a physical reality to the different types of LTM within the brain. This has also been confirmed in many other studies further supporting the validity of this finding
what does it mean when we say that the different types of LTM have real-life application
being able to identify different aspects of LTM allows psychologists to target certain kinds of memory in order to better people’s life’s
Belleville et al (2006) demonstrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people who had a mild cognition impairment
e.g. trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training a control group
episodic memory is the memory type most often affected by mild cognitive impairments, which highlights the benefit of being able to distinguish between types of LTM - because it enables specific treatments to be developed
problems with clinical evidence
psychologists are very interested in studying people with brain injuries
People like Clive Wearing and Henry Molaison have provided useful information about what happens when memory is damaged
This has even helped researchers to understand how memory supposedly works.
But such clinical studies are not perfect. For instance, there us a serious lack of control of all sorts of different variables in clinical studies.
for example, in the case of a patient with amnesia, the researcher/ psychologists have very little control knowledge of what their memories were like before the accident. Therefore, they do not know if their memories got worse or actually got better. If a patient had a digit span of three digits, it is hard to know whether this is worse, better or the same as before. Therefore, the conclusions that psychologists have came to on memory based on clinical evidence may not actually be valid
