types of long term memory

Question 1

what is episodic memory?

Answer 1

-refers to the ability to recall events from our lives
-e.g a record of personal experiences such as breakfast u had in the morning
1.time stamped- you remember when they happened as well as what happened
episodic memories also store information on how events relate to eachother in time
2.single memory- includes people, places, objects and behaviours- interwoven to make a single memory
3.conscous effort needed to recall episodic memroies- happens quickly but aware ur searching for the memory

Question 2

what is semantic memory?

Answer 2

-contains shared knowledge of the world
-e.g what an orange tastes like
-not time stamped, dont rmbr when we first heard
-less personal but facts we all share
-constantly being added too
-less vulnerbale to distortion and forgetting

Question 3

what is procedural memory?

Answer 3

-memory for actions and skills or how we do things
-without much effort
-e.g driving a car
-comes thru practice
-becomes natural
-may even hard it hard to explain to someone else, bc you dont think as mcuh when u do it urself(it comes naturally)

Question 4

what are the strengths of types of long term memory?

Answer 4

(clinical evidence)
-famous case studies
-HM and clive wearing
-both men severely imapired due to brain damage
-by operation and infection
-semantic memory unaffected
-still understood meanings of words
-e.g couldnt recall stroking a dog an hour ago(HM) but knew what a dog meant
-both could walk and talk
-clive could still read music and play piano
-so proof diff memory stores in LTM - one may be damaged and other uanaffected

(real world app)
-help ppl w memory isssues
-the older the more memory loss often assoaciated w episodic memory
-harder to recall memories that are recent
but past episodic remains intact
-belleville et al devised intervention to improve episodic memory in older ppl
-Ps performed better on memory tests after training then control grp
-so distiguishing between types of LTM helps dvelop treatments

Question 5

what are the weaknesses of types of long term memory?

Answer 5

(counterpoint to clinical evidence)
-clinical studies lack control of variables
-brain injuries experienced by the Ps was normally unexpected
-researcher has no way of controlling what happened to the participant before and after
-researcher doesnt know ab their memory before the injury
-hard to judge how much worse it got
-limits how much it tells us ab types of LTM

(confliciting neuroimaging evidence)
-Buckner and petersen reviewed evidence regarding the location of smenatic and episodic memory
-concluded semantic is on the left side of prefrontal cortex and episodic on the right
-however other research links prefrontal cortex w encoding episodic and right with episodic retrival
-poor agreement on where each type might be located