Memory: Types Of LTM

Question 1

What is Tulvings theory of LTM?

Answer 1

• the first psychologist to realise there were 3 types of LTM and the MSM was too simplistic and inflexible to demonstrate this.
• he named them episodic, semantic and procedural

Question 2

What is procedural LTM?

Answer 2

Type of LTM for the performance of particular kinds of actions
- e.g. riding a bike, walking, writing, playing the piano

Question 3

What is episodic LTM?

Answer 3

A form of LTM for events occurring in an individuals life - personal recollections
-e.g. first day of school, someone’s wedding, a concert, etc

Question 4

What is semantic LTM?

Answer 4

These are memories for meaning and understanding things and knowledge.
- e.g. facts, info and trivia

Question 5

What is some of the clinical evidence of these types of LTM?

Answer 5

• several cases of patients who have suffered brain damage to their hippocampus and have memory deficits - in this case, Clive Wearing and HM
  — Episodic memory in both was severely impaired as a consequence of amnesia. Both had great difficulty recalling things from the past.
  — semantic memories were relatively unaffected. As they still knew the meaning of word (e.g. can’t remember owning a dog in the past, but would still know the concept of a dog)
  — procedural memories were also intact. They both knew how to walk and tie their shoelaces, etc. in Clive’s case (being a professional musician) he could still read music, sing and play piano

Question 6

What did Corkin (1968) study?

Answer 6

• studied HM - who had severe amnesia as a result of an operation to treat epileptic seizures.
• HM was taught a new motor skill (tracing lines on a moving disk). Initially his performance was very poor, but he gradually improved.
• several days later, he was tested again and was able to do the task as well as he previously could, even though he had no recollection of having done the task before

Question 7

What was Tulvings Brain Scan Evidence?

Answer 7

• he injected himself with particles of radioactive gold to track brain blood flow in a scanner. When he thought about historical facts, blood flow increased in the back of his brain and when he was thinking about his childhood blood flow increased at the front. This shows different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain.
• also got ptps to do tasks while scanned by a PET scanner and found episodic was recalled from the right prefrontal cortex and semantic from the left. Procedural was recalled from the cerebellum and the basal ganglia

Question 8

what was Cohen and Squire alternative theory?

Answer 8

Argues there are only 2 types of LTM.
- they accept that procedural is one type (non declarative - unconsciously recalled), but argue that semantic and episodic are stored together in one LTM store called the Declarative memory (constantly recalled)