Types of long term memory

Question 1

What is episodic memory?

Answer 1

Personal memories of events.
Includes contextual details and emotional tone

Question 2

What is semantic memory?

Answer 2

Shared memories for facts and knowledge.
May be concrete, e.g. knowing that ice is made of water, or abstract, e.g. mathematical knowledge
Generally begin as episodic memories

Question 3

What is procedural memory?

Answer 3

Memory for how to do things - concerned with skills
Typically acquired through repetition and practice
These are implicit because they have become automatic

Question 4

Evaluation? ✅

Answer 4

• evidence from brain scans
• episodic and semantic memory associated with the temporal lobe
• procedural memory activation associated with the cerebellum (basal ganglia and limbic system also involved)
• indicates that the 3 memory types are found in different parts of the brain and so are separate

Question 5

Evaluation? ✅

Answer 5

• support comes from studies of Alzheimer’s patients
• Hodges and Patterson 2007: found patients who retain ability to form new semantic memories but not episodic
• this is a single dissociation
• Irish et al 2011: found second dissociation in patients who had the reverse
• double dissociation suggests episodic and semantic memories are separate

Question 6

Evaluation? ❌

Answer 6

• priming: how implicit memories influence responses a person makes to a stimulus
• research shows priming is controlled by brain system separate from temporal system that supports explicit memory
• suggests there’s a fourth kind of LTM: the perceptual-representation system (PRS)
• suggests original theory of LTM is overly simplistic