Types of Long Term Memory eval

Question 1

Clinical evidence

Answer 1

Both HM and Clive Wearing’s episodic memory were impaired because of amnesia. They had difficulty remembering past events but their semantic memory were not affected. For example HM could not have remembered stroking a dog but he would not need to have the concept of dog being explained to him. Their procedural memory was intact. They knew how to tie their shoelaces and in Clive Wearing case (musician) he knew how to read music and play piano. Supports because LTM have different stores and stored inn different areas of the brain.

Question 2

Neuroimaging evidence

Answer 2

Different types of LTM are stored in different parts of the brain. Tulving got his ppts to perform various memory tasks while their brains were scanned using PET scanner. They found that episodic and semantic memory were recalled from prefrontal cortex.
Left prefrontal cortex = semantic
Right prefrontal cortex =episodic
Also cerebellum= procedural

Support as LTM are are stored in different areas so there are different types of LTM as stated by Tulving. Many research studies into this and found same thing so is reliable and validity of this explanation increases

Question 3

Real life application

Answer 3

Research into LTM has allowed psychologists to target certain kinds of memory in order to better people’s lives. Belleville et al improved episodic memory in older people wo had mild cognitive impairment. They found that the trained ppts performed better on test of episodic memory afters training than control group. Strength as research into LTM has enabled specific treatments to be developed which can benefit others.

Question 4

Two types of LTM not three

Answer 4

Cohen and Squire disagree with Tulving that there are three LTM. They accept that procedural memory is one type but episodic and semantic are stored together in one store they call declarative memory( can be consciously recalled). Procedural memories ae non-declarative. Limitation because Tulving argues that there are 3 but research has shown that this is not trye so validity of 3 LTM decreases.

Question 5

Based on clinical evidence and Case studies

Answer 5

People like Clive Wearing and HM have gave lots of useful info about how memory works but clinical studies are not perfect. There is serious lack of control of all sorts of variables which means that many explanations of how the memory works are not valid. Limitation as this means that using idiographic studies to study memory makes many studies limited as they only consist of one person and you cannot generalise this to wider population so studies tend to lack ecological validity.