Memory Flashcards
What are the three types of long term memory?
Episodic, semantic, procedural
What types of memory are non-declarative?
Procedural
What types of memory are declarative?
Semantic and episodic
What is episodic memory?
Memories of personal events or experiences you may have had in your life that are personal to you
What is semantic memory?
Memory of general knowledge that isn’t personal to you
What is procedural memory?
A skill-based memory that is focused on recalling how to do something
What is the weakness of the different types of LTM?
There isn’t a clear difference between episodic and semantic memories (such as language). Most of our memories are a fusion of episodic and semantic ones. Therefore, the idea of three stores may be an oversimplification.
What are the strengths of the three different types of LTM?
Brain scans have shown separate locations in the brain for each of the three types of memory, supporting the idea of different types of memory. If the three types of memory are different then each should have a specific location in the brain. Researchers have found support for this. TO BE CONTINUED
People who experience loss of memory due to brain damage lose only certain kinds of memory. Case of Clive Wearing/ HM, who had problems with his episodic memory but not his procedural. Shows that there are different types of memory.
What is declarative memory? (Don’t need to know)
Memories that require conscious recall
What is non-declarative memory? (Not needed)
Memories that don’t require conscious recall
What was the aim of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
To see if the memory of words was affected by the number of words a person had to remember
What was the method of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
Randomly selected words from the 4,000 most common words in English,
103 students on a Psychology course as PPs and were tested in groups over a number of different sessions. In each session, the PPs listened to 20 word lists, each containing different words. The words varied in length from 10-40 words.
After each list, PPs had to recall the words they had just heard.
What were the results of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
Murdock found that the likelihood of recall was related to the position of the word in the list. No matter the number of words in list. PPs had:
Higher recall for the first few words on the list than those in the middle of the list. This is called a primacy effect.
Highest recall for the first few words on the list. This is called the recency effect.
What was the conclusion of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
The results demonstrate a serial position effect (the position of a word affects the likelihood of its recall). Recency effects are strongest.
The results support the multi-store model because they fit the predictions of the model. The first words are well remembered because they have been rehearsed longest and are therefore LT memories. The more recent words are well remembered because they are still in the STM store.
What is the weakness of Murdock’s serial position curve study?
Memory was investigated using lists of words that only represent a small part of what we do with our memories. This research only tells us about one aspect of our memory- how to deal with memorising words- even though, there are lots of other aspects to memory. This way of studying memory is artificial as it relates to some but not all aspects of life.
