types of long-term memory Flashcards
outline Tulving’s theory of LTM.
one of the first cognitive psychologists to realise that the multi store model’s view of the LTM was too simplistic.
he proposed that there were three stores of LTM, containing different types of memory - episodic, semantic and procedural.
describe episodic memory.
LTM store for personal events.
e.g. visit to the dentist, psychology class you had yesterday etc.
it includes memories of when the event occurred and the people, objects, places and behaviours involved.
these memories have to be retrieved deliberately and need a conscious effort to be remembered.
describe semantic memory.
LTM store for our knowledge of the world.
includes facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean.
e.g. what an orange tastes like, how to apply for a job.
less personal and contains an immense collection of info that is always being added too, and according to Tulving is less vulnerable to distortion and forgetting than episodic memory.
also usually needs to be recalled deliberately.
describe procedural memory.
LTM store for knowledge on how to do things, including memories of learned actions or skills.
we can recall these without much conscious awareness or effort.
e.g. driving a car.
discuss clinical evidence as a strength of different types of long term memory,
one strength is clinical evidence from case studies.
there are several cases of patients who have suffered from brain damage that have memory deficits - such as HM and Clive Wearing.
episodic memory in both of these men was severely impaired as a consequence of amnesia. they had great difficulty recalling events from their pasts, however their semantic memories were relatively unaffected - they still understood the meaning of words. their procedural memories were also intact. they both knew how to walk and speak, and Wearing still knew how to play the piano.
this evidence supports Tulving’s view that there are different memory stores in the LTM - one store can be damaged and the others left unaffected.
however, a major limitation of case studies is that they lack control variables. the brain injuries experienced by the ptps were usually unexpected, so the researcher had no way of controlling what happened to the ptp before and after the injury - and had no way of knowing what the ptps memory was like prior to the damage. because of this there is no way of knowing exactly how much worse it is following the injury.
this lack of control limits what clinical studies can tell us about different types of LTM, thus limiting the support the evidence can give Tulving’s theory.
discuss brain scan evidence as a strength of different types of long term memory,
one strength of types of long term memory is brain scan evidence.
tulving got his ptps to perform various tasks while their brains were scanned using a PET scanner.
they found that episodic and semantic were both recalled from the prefrontal cortex - episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex, and semantic memories were recalled from the left prefrontal cortex. procedural memories however were recalled from the cerebellum.
this supports Tulving’s theory that there are different stores of LTM with different types of memory.
additionally, Tulving’s use of brain scans is a highly scientific method, which is much less prone to bias than other methods of investigation. Therefore, this brain scan evidence provides very strong evidence of the theory of different types of long term memory.
however, there are conflicting research findings linking types of LTM to areas of the brain.
as opposed to Tulving’s conclusion of semantic memories being located in the LPC and episodic in the RPC, other research has linked the left prefrontal cortex with the encoding of episodic memories and the right prefrontal cortex with episodic retrieval.
this challenges any neurophysiological evidence to support types of memory as there is poor agreement on where each type is located in the brain.
