Lesson 7- types of long term memory

Question 1

episodic

Answer 1

for key events, specific details, context of event, emotions you were feeling at the time, stored in hippocampus

Question 2

semantic

Answer 2

for fscts and general knowledge about the world, also relate to things such as function of objects, what behviour is suitable in certain situations, as well as abstract concepts such as mathmatics and language
begins as episodic memories because we acquire knowledge based on personal experiences, gradual transition from episodic to semantic when memory slowly loses association to specific events and is generalised, sometimes people can have strong recollection of when and where they learned a particular fact, stored in temporal lobe

Question 3

procedural

Answer 3

concerned with motor skills and actions, typically acquired through practise and repetition and seem to be more resistant to forgetting or amnesia than other types, less aware as they have become automatic and are unavailable for conscious inspection making it difficult to explain them verbally, if you think too mucj about them prevents you from carrything them out, important they are automatic so that we can focus attention on other tasks while performing these everyday skills, stored in cerebellum

Question 4

ltm evaluation

Answer 4

-evidence has come from patients with amnesia, typically unable to store new episodic or semantic memories but procedural appears to be largely unaffected
-scientific evidence from brain scans supports different types of ltm, when asking participants ro recall different types of info different areas of the brain are shown to be active on fMRI, episodic-hippocampus, semantic-temporal, procedural cerebellum
-case studies, Clive Wearing suffered viral infection which damaged hippocampus, has no episodic memory and cannot form new semantic memories, however procedural is still intact- can still play piano
-research on ltm types typically conducted on individual patients, case studies are highly detailed, lots of info but are isolated cases of one individual, would be inappropriate to assume that everyones ltm is formed in the same way, findings cannot be generalised to wider population