types of LTM Flashcards
Tulving (1985)
one of the first psychologists to criticise MSM. He said the MSM view of LTM was too simplistic.
Tulving stated that there were 3 LTM stores - episodic, semantic and procedural memory.
episodic memory
store for our personal events - ‘mind’s diary’
contains info such as ‘who, what, when, where’
memories in this store have to be consciously retrieved with effort.
semantic memory
store for our knowledge of the world - ‘mind’s encyclopedia’
information added to this store all the time
procedural memory
store for our knowledge of how to do things - ‘mind’s instruction manual’
it’s how we remember skills eg. how to write
often we do this unconsciously and with very little effort.
case of HM
In an attempt to control his seizures, HM underwent brain surgery to remove his hippocampus and amygdala. Then, H.M’s seizures decreased, but he could no longer form new memories (anterograde amnesia) or remember the prior 11 years of his life.
Clive Wearing
suffered from viral encephalitis. In response to infection, his brain was swelling putting pressure on to the hippocampus region.
His brain suffered irrevocable damage. With his hippocampus destroyed by the virus, Clive’s memory was gone. - severe anterograde amnesia, not only can he remember very little of his previous life he is unable to form new memories.
The one person he can remember is his wife Deborah. At the time of his illness, they had been married about a year. Now whenever he sees her he greets her as if they were newlyweds separated for a time even if she just leaves the room and comes back.
strength of different types of LTM - HM
P: supportive evidence from HM
E: HM couldn’t remember if he had stroked a dog 30mins earlier and he couldn’t remember owning a dog in the past. so episodic memory was damaged as he couldn’t remember personal info. however, HM knew what a dog was and could identify one in a pic. so, semantic memory undamaged
C: supports view of different LTM stores as HM’s episodic memory was damaged but his semantic + procedural memories are not.
strength of different LTM - Clive Wearing
P: support from CW
E: episodic memory damaged as he can’t remember his kids names but semantic and procedural memory undamaged as he remembers facts about the world and knows how to play piano
C: supports idea that we have many different types of LTM as he remembers some things but not everything
strength of different LTM - scientific
P: use of brain scans tis scientific
E: Tulving did PET scans on Ps whilst performing memory tasks. this can be replicated so we can repeat the studies over and over. if results are consistent eg. semantic memories in left prefrontal cortex then findings are reliable
C: C+E established eg. tasks using episodic memory show that it’s located in right prefrontal cortex
limitation of diff types of LTM - case study
P: the study used eg. HM was a case study
E: case studies have a small sample size, HM is only 1 person. so we can’t generalise results to everyone esle
C: studying HM doesn’t tell us much about different types of LTM in everyone else
