Long-term Memory

Question 1

What 3 types of long-term memory did Endel Tulving propose in 1967?

Answer 1

Episodic Memory, Semantic Memory and Procedural Memory.

Question 2

What is Episodic Memory?

Answer 2

• It stores information about personal events
• has 3 specific elements: details of the event, the actual event and the emotion experienced with the event.
• It is declarative and has to be consciously recalled
• Episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus and the right Prefrontal Cortex (Tulving 1994)

Question 3

What is the Semantic Memory?

Answer 3

• It stores information about the world, eg the meaning of words and general knowledge
• Often start as an episodic memory but are not time stamped and do not remain associated with the event
• They have to be consciously recalled and are declarative
• Are associated with the left Prefrontal Cortex

Question 4

What is Procedural Memory?

Answer 4

• Involves information about knowing how to do things and carrying out complex physical tasks
• It does not involve conscious thought and is non-declarative
• It is associated with the cerebellum and the motor cortex

Question 5

One strength (PEEL) …

Answer 5

P- There is empirical evidence
E - Research shows that different areas of the brain were active when different types of LTM were used. Tulving et Al in 1994 got p’s to complete memory tasks whilst in a PET scanner. They found that episodic and semantic memories activated different areas in the prefrontal cortex (semantic memories from the left and episodic memories from the right.) Procedural memory was associated with the cerebellum.
E- This provides evidence for the existence of different types of LTM as they activate different areas of the brain.
L- This increases the validity of the existence of semantic, episodic and procedural memories.

Question 6

One limitation (PEEL) …

Answer 6

P- A weakness is that using supporting evidence from patients with brain damage eg. HM is that there is a lack of control over the research
E- In the case of HM, there were clear confounding variables. HM was on a high dose of anti-epileptic medication prior to his operation. This may have affected his memory rather than just the removal of his hippocampus.
E- As a result we cannot determine whether the hippocampus removal was responsible for impairment of HM’s LTM or his medication affected his memory
L - This lowers the internal validity of the case studies as there is a lack of control. As a result, the uniqueness of the patients studied means that results must be generalised with caution.