Types of long term memory - AO3

Question 1

What are the strengths of types of LTM?

Answer 1

• P: Strength = understanding this allows psychologists to help people memory problems
• E: As people age they get memory loss - specific to EM - recent ones but past EM remain intact
• E: Belleville et al. (2006): Intervention to improve EM in older people. Trained PPs performed better in a test on EM after training than a control group
• L: Shows that distinguishing between different types of LTM enables specific treatments to be developed
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• P: Strength = research support
• E: Vargha-Khadem et al. (1997): 3 young patients who had damage to hippocampus but avoided significant damage to the nearby parahippocampal cortices
• E: All three had significant episodic amnesia however all able to go the school and recall semantic information at an ability level just below average for their age
• Suggests semantic is less dependedent on hippocampus than episodic. Biological evidence that semantic and episodic memories are distinct processes using different brain regions

Question 2

What is a limitation of types of LTM?

Answer 2

• P: Limitation = conflicting research findings linking types of LTM to areas of the brain
• E: Buchner and Peterson (1996): Reviewed evidence regarding the location of semantic and episodic memory. Semantic is on the left side of the prefrontal cortex and episodic is on the right
• C: Other research links the left prefrontal cotex with EM and right with semantic (Tulving et al. (1999))
• S: Challenged neurophysiological evidence to support types of LTM as there is poor agreement on where each type is located