The Study of Brain Damaged Patients in Memory Flashcards
What is retrograde amnesia?
When you can’t recall memories from your past.
What is anterograde amnesia?
When you can’t form new memories, but can still remember things from before you developed this amnesia.
What happened to Henry Molaison?
In 1953, part of his temperal lobe and hippocampus were removed to control seizures that started when he fell off his bike as a child.
He couldn’t form new long term memories, but could remember things from before the surgery.
How does HM support the multi store model?
He can’t make new LTM but STM and old LTM are fine, therefore evidence for separate unitary stores and linear model.
How does HM disprove the multi store model?
he could remember some types of LTM but not others (eg new skills like mirror drawing) , which suggests different types of LTM stored in different places.
What happened to Patient KF?
- a motorbike accident left patient KF with an intact LTM, but a STM capacity of only 2 digits.
• KF’s STM for auditory stimuli was much worse than his STM for visual stimuli. His deficit was aiso limited to verbal materials like words - he could remember meaningful sounds (eg cats mewing, etc).
Why does KF support the multi store model?
damage to one memory store but not the other supports the idea that they are unitary stores.
Why does KF disprove the multi store model?
- the MSM predicts that if people have damage to their STM, they will aiso have damage to their LTM. Patient KF had damage to their STM without damage to their LTM.
• for STM, KF performed better on recall tasks of words presented visually than words spoken (acoustics). which suggests there is more than one type of STM.
