Types of Long Term Memory

Question 1

Episodic Memory vs. Semantic Memory

Answer 1

Episodic Memory
Specific events & their context
One Time
Autonoetic Consciousness
Emotional
More vulnerable
Late development
Unique to humans?
Medial Temporal Lobes

Semantic Memory
Facts, general knowledge
No specific time
Noetic Consciousness
Not emotional
Less vulnerable
Earlier development
Not unique to humans
Lateral Temporal Lobes

Question 2

Neurological Evidence for Episodic & Semantic Memory

Answer 2

Graham, Becker, & Hodges (1997)
Task: Two tasks in patients with semantic
dementia (damage to lateral temporal cortex),
and Alzheimer’s disease (damage to medial
temporal lobes)
1. Episodic Memory: Recognition memory for
objects (was the object previously studied,
yes or no)?
2. Semantic Memory: Is this object a real or
non-real animal (yes or no)?
Results:
• Semantic dementia patients have spared
episodic memory compared to controls, but
impaired semantic memory.
• Patients with Alzheimer’s disease have
spared semantic memory, but impaired
episodic memory.
 Double dissociation! Semantic and episodic
memory are spared or impaired depending on
neurological damage to different brain regions.

Question 3

Are Episodic & Semantic Memory Truly Separable?

Answer 3

Amnesia patients can sometimes learn new semantic information (but much
more slowly).
- Brain systems less distinct than originally thought
Autobiographical memories, or memories for personally relevant events,
integrate both episodic and semantic memories.
– E.g., Memories for repeated events like holidays contain both episodic information
(“Last year we burnt the turkey”) and semantic information (“I never eat the
Brussels sprouts”)
Episodic & semantic memories are probably interdependent.

Question 4

Procedural Memory in Amnesic Patients

Answer 4

Milner (1962)
Task: Mirror Tracing task over
consecutive days in patient HM
Results:
• Patient HM, with damage to the
medial temporal lobe and impaired
episodic memory, showed fewer
errors on the mirror with practice
• BUT he never remembered the
learning trials themselves
 Procedural memory is intact in
amnesia

Question 5

Procedural Memory in Huntingdon’s disease

Answer 5

Butters et al., (1990)
Task: Pursuit-Rotor Task
Track or pursue a target on a rotating
turntable
Results:
• Healthy controls (NC), amnesic
patients (AMN), and patients with
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) showed
normal performance on the
pursuit-rotor task
• Patients with Huntingdon’s disease
(HD), who have damage to the
basal ganglia, were impaired
 Procedural memory is not intact in
Huntingdon’s disease

Question 6

Development of Procedural Memories

Answer 6

Results:
• Adults showed no difference in time
required to tie shoe laces with eyes
opened or closed.
• Children were slower to tie shoe
laces with eyes shut.
 Skill changed from being declarative
to non-declarative
• Children were more accurate at describing
the sequence of movements and the
correct description of how they tied their
shoelaces
• Adults were unable to pick out the video
that showed the method they used to tie
their shoelaces

Question 7

Priming

Answer 7

Priming occurs when the presentation of one stimulus (the priming
stimulus) changes the response to a subsequent test stimulus (the teststimulus)

Question 8

Priming: evidence in healthy adults

Answer 8

Task: Word Fragment (implicit) vs. Recognition
Memory Test (explicit)
Tested same day or a week later

Recognition memory was much worse at a
delay, but there was no effect on priming

 Priming is independent from recognition
memory, and is a more durable memory.

Question 9

Priming: perceptual versus conceptual

Answer 9

Perceptual priming (sometimes called “repetition priming”)
• Modality specific
– Abolished by a modality change such as visual-to-auditory
• Does not depend upon semantic or elaborative encoding
• Tested by perceptual identification (flashing a word up briefly), fragment
completion, etc.
• Spared in amnesia
Conceptual priming
• Not modality specific
• Benefits from semantic encoding
• Tested by category instance production tasks (given category cue: “fruit”,
participants produce previously studied exemplars, e.g. “kiwi”, “pear”)
• Not always spared in amnesia

Question 10

Perceptual priming: amnesia

Answer 10

Task: 4 tests for a list of words in Amnesics
& Controls
1. Free Recall (explicit)
2. Recognition (explicit)
3. Fragmented Words (implicit)
4. Initial Three Letters (implicit)
Results: Explicit memory was impaired in
amnesics, but implicit memory was not