memory - types of long term memory Flashcards
what are the three types of LTM?
episodic, semantic, procedural
what is episodic memory? how do memories have to be retrieved?
this is a LTM store for personal events, memories of where events occurred and people involved, memories have to be retrieved consciously with effort. the memories are all time stamped, like a personal diary.
what is sematic memory? how does it need to be retrieved?
stores our knowledge of the world e.g what words and concepts mean, these also need to be recalled consciously. these memories are not time stamped, less personal and it is less vulnerable to distortion and forgetting.
what is procedural memory and how is it retrieved ?
it stores knowledge of how to do things, including our memories of learnt skills, we recall these without making conscious effort eg riding a bike, we may find these hard to describe to others.
what is one strength of studies on LTM? relating to the HM and Clive wearing case study.
both men has severely impaired episodic memory but unaffected semantic memories. their procedural memories were also unaffected. this supports Tulving’s view that there are different memory stores in LTM. as one can be damaged but the others remain unaffected.
however what can be a limitation to the clinical evidence provided from case studies?
they can lack a control of variables, the brain injuries experienced by p’s were usually unexpected, so researchers have no way of controlling what happened before this or judge the individuals memory before the damage. so its hard to judge how much worse it has gotten. limits what clinical studies can tell us about LTM.
what is a strength to LTM that involves real world application?
understanding the types of LTM allows psychologists to help people with memory problems, research has shown as u age episodic memory is the most likely to be lost, and there are now interventions to improve episodic memory, ps that took part performed better after being trained in this than the control group.
what is one last limitation for LTM research, involving neuroimaging evidence?
there has been conflicting findings linking types of LTM to areas of the brain. Buckner and Peterson concluded that semantic memory is located in the left side of the prefrontal cortex but other researchers have linked it to the right - with episodic retrieval. the poor agreement on this suggests that we do not actually understand much about which part of the brain controls each type of LTM.
who was clive wearing?
he had a severe form of amnesia from a viral infection that damaged the hippocampus and other parts of his brain, he can remember some things but not everything from his past e.g he can remember he has children but he cannot remember their names.
what was the psychologist that proposed the idea of three LTM stores?
Endel Tulving (1985)
