Schmolk

Question 1

What was her aim

Answer 1

To look at the relationship between performance on a semantic memory test and the extent lateral temporal lobe damage to find out to what extent it is involved in semantic memory.

Question 2

What was her sample

Answer 2

-6 patients with amnesia who had severe damage to MTL
-8 controls (normal), HM was a patient
- Split into groups MTL and MTL+

Question 3

What was the method

Answer 3

• Conducted 13 tests, 9 were from semantic battery using line drawings of 24 living and 24 non-living objects.
• The p’s had to identify animals and non-living objects and put them into categories.
  -Participants were asked to complete the pyramids and palms test.
  -The percentage of correct/incorrect answers was worked out, some tests their accuracy was scored on 0-4, other physiologists checked this

Question 4

What were the results

Answer 4

• MTL+ did the worst
• HM did not do the worst overall but scored the worst in his group
  -MTL+ group 50% living, 62% non living objects
  -HM 67% living, 90% non living objects

Question 5

what was the conclusion

Answer 5

MTL+patients had greater difficulty than MTL suggesting that the anterolateral temporal cortex is responsible for semantic knowledge

Question 6

Strengths AO3

Answer 6

R- Inter-related reliability; more than one psychiatrist agreed on the observations and scores which makes the findings about memory more reliable
Standardised procedure;13 tests, 24 living, 24 non-living-can be repeated, increases reliability
A- useful for explaining a rare type of dementia - semantic dementia
V- participants were matched on age, sex and education; reduces participant variables- increases validity
OTOH- lacks ecological validity; lab experiment, not a typical environment for semantic recall- lowers validity

Question 7

Weaknesses AO3

Answer 7

G- small sample size of 6 with amnesia; lacks generalisability
Brain damage is unique; 2 different groups but all p’s in the group are not the same- cannot generalise to other people with brain damage.
V- lacks ecological validity; not a typical environment for semantic recall- lowers validity
E- participants had brain damage; vulnerable- cannot give informed consent