Types of Long Term Memory Flashcards
What are the three types of Long-Term Memory?
1) Episodic Memory
2) Semantic Memory
3) Procedural Memory
What is Episodic Memory?
Personal Memories of events. This memory includes a contextual details with an emotional tone. eg:The teacher you liked
What is Procedural Memory?
Memory of how to do things. These memories are automatic, due to the result of repeated practice. eg: Riding a bike
What is Semantic Memory?
Shared memories or knowledge. These memories may be concrete such as facts or mathematical knowledge. eg: Knowing ice is made out of water
What are the main Two types of LTM?
1) Explicit/declarative - knowing that (Episodic and Semantic memory)
2) implicit/procedural - knowing how (Procedural)
Episodic memory
- knowing that
- memory concerned with personal experiences
has three details you may payed attention to: - emotions that were felt
- special details of the event
- the context of the event
- personal kind of knowledge
Semantic memories
- knowledge about the world shared by everyone
- relates to things
- begin as episodic memories, as we acquire knowledge based on personal experiences. There is a graudal transition from episodic to semantic memory, where the memory slows looses its association to particular events, so that information can be generalised as semantic memory.
But,sometimes people continue to have a strong recollation of when and where they learnt a particular fact.
Procedural Memory
- concerned with skills
- remembering how to do something
- are typically acquired through repetition and practice
- memory is implicit
- less aware of these memories as they are automatic
- sometimes focusing on these procedural memories too much prevents us from acting out. For eg:loosing focus when riding a bicycle
- attention to step by step procedure disrupts the automatic performance
- Its important for our procedural memories to be automatic, so we can focus our attention on other tasks while performing everyday skills.
Evaluations for Types of LTM:
1) Evidence from Brain scans(FOR)
2) Evidence from case studies (FOR)
3) cons of using the brains scans as evidence (AGAINST)
4) studies from patients with alxheimers (FOR)
5) may be too simplistic (AGAINST)
Evidence from brain scans…
- distinction made between different kinds of LTM is supportd by brain scans
Episodic Memory- associated with the hippocampus, and other parts of the frontal lobe where the hippocampus is located , also the activity in the frontal lobe. - Semantic Memory, relies on the temporal lobe.
- Procedural Memory activation, is associated with cerebellum, which is involved in the control of the fine motor skills, as well as motor cortex. Basal ganglia and limbic system are also involved in this learning.
Brain scans overall indicate, the three types of memory are found in different parts of the brain, therefore are seperate.
Evidence from Case studies
-HM ability to form LTMs was affected by the destruction of his hippocampus, but he reatined his pre-existing ltms. After surgery, HM could only form procedural memories. Eg: he was able to learn how to draw a figure by looking(supported by corkin2002){procedural memory} . However, he didnt have memory that he learnt this (episodic/semantic memory).
Supports the distinctioin between procedural and declarative memories, therefore multiple types of LTM exist..
The problem with brain-damaged patients…..
- listed in previous topic
- The dfficulty in studying amneics,such as Hm, is that it is difficult to conclude which part of the brain has been affected,unless the patient has died.
- Most these conclusions from studies, have been based of alive patients.
- Futhermore, damage to a particular part of the brain, doesnt mean that it is responsible for the behaviour- could be acting as a relay station.
Malfunctioning of the relay station can cause impair performance. - Therefore cant make a correlation between a particular area of the brain to the type of LTM
Differentiating between episodic and semantic memories…
- support for episodic and semantic memories from patients with Alzhemir’s disease and, found some patients who retain their ability to form semantic memories but not episodic memories. (Found by Hodges and Patterson,2007) This is a single dissociation.
A second dissocation was found by an irish et al in 2007, found that in Alzheimr’s patients its opposite - they have poor semantic memories but intact episodic memories. - a conclusion,can be made that episodic and semantic memories are seperate, episiodic memories may be a gateway to semantic memories but the formation for semantic memories is also possible.
Priming and Fourth type of LTM…
- there may been an existence of another LTM
priming is how implicit memories influence the responses a person makes for a stimulus. If a person is given a list of words including the word’yellow’ and later asked to name a fruit they are more likely to say ‘banana’ than if not primed.
This type of memory is implicit. as the asnwers are automatic and unconscious. - research claims that priming is controlled by a brain system seperate from the temporal system, supports explicit memory(semantic and episodic memories).
- suggesting that the fourth LTM, is the perceptual representation system(PRS) memory that is related to priming. Supported by (Speirs et al,2001)
this overall suggests that there are other types of LTM that may exist, the original theory of LTM is way too simplistic.
