Types Of Long Term Memory

Question 1

What are the three types of long term memory?

Answer 1

Episodic
Semantic
Procedural

Question 2

What are explicit memories?

Answer 2

Memories that must be retrieved consciously and with effort

Question 3

What are implicit memories?

Answer 3

Memories that can usually be recalled without making a conscious or deliberate effort

Question 4

What are declarative memories?

Answer 4

Memories that can be expressed verbally

Question 5

What are non-declarative memories?

Answer 5

Memories that are difficult to explain verbally

Question 6

What is the episodic memory?

Answer 6

A long term memory store that stores information about personal experiences and specific events
- Explicit
- Declarative
- May be less resistant to forgetting
- Hippocampus and frontal lobe

Question 7

What is the semantic memory?

Answer 7

A long term memory store for our knowledge of the world
- Explicit
- Declarative
- May be less resistant to forgetting
- Temporal lobe

Question 8

What is the procedural memory?

Answer 8

A long term memory store for motor skills and learned tasks
- Implicit
- Non-declarative
- May be more resistant to forgetting
- Cerebellum and motor cortex

Question 9

What is the study that aimed to investigate the differences in the processing of episodic and semantic memory tasks?

Answer 9

Tulving
- 6 participants were injected with a small amount of radioactive gold which shows up on neuroimaging. They were asked to think about either semantic or episodic memories, then injected with gold 60 seconds later and scanned 8 seconds after
- Episodic memories showed increased blood flow in the frontal lobes, while semantic memories were associated with the posterior cortex. This suggests that episodic and semantic LTM involve different brain areas, indicating a biological basis for their separation

Question 10

Give evaluations to the study that aimed to investigate the differences in the processing of episodic and semantic memory tasks

Answer 10

(+) High Control
- A strength of Tulving’s study is that it is a lab experiment and therefore establishes cause and effect
- As this experiment had high control over extraneous variables we can be confident that the IV, whether participants recalled semantic or episodic memories, affected the DV, the location of increased blood flow in the brain
- This is a strength because the results of this study are unlikely to be affected by confounding variables
- Therefore we can be confident that the conclusion that episodic and semantic LTM involves different parts of the brain is internally valid
(-) Small Sample Size
- A limitation of Tulving’s research is that it has low population validity
- The sample size of only 6 participants is too small to be representative of the wider population
- This is a limitation because it may be difficult to generalise the findings about brain areas involved in LTM to all individuals
- Therefore Tulving’s study provides weak evidence for the different types of LTM, as the results may not apply universally