Schmolk Flashcards

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1
Q

What was her aim

A

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.

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2
Q

What was her sample

A

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

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3
Q

What was the method

A
  • 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
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4
Q

What were the results

A
  • 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
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5
Q

what was the conclusion

A

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

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6
Q

Strengths AO3

A

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

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7
Q

Weaknesses AO3

A

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

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