Types of Long-Term Memory

Tulving (1985): Proposed there were three LTM stores containing different information - episodic memory, semantic memory and procedural memory.

Episodic memory: A long-term memory store for personal events such as memories of when events occurred and the people, objects, places and behaviours involved. These memories have to be retrieved consciously and with effort.

Semantic Memory: A long-term memory store for our knowledge of the world, including facts and our knowledge of what words and concepts mean. These memories usually need to be recalled deliberately.

Procedural Memory: A long-term memory store for our knowledge of how to do things, including our memories of learned skills. We usually recall these memories without making a conscious or deliberate effort.

Research Support: Clive Wearing and H< both had severely impaired episodic memory but their semantic memory was relatively unaffected. For example, HM couldn’t recall stroking a dog but he understood the concept of what a dog was. Their procedural memories were also intact. For example, Clive Wearing knew how to read music, sing and play the piano.

Limitation of Using Case Studies: Clinical studies lack control of variables as the brain injuries experienced by participants were usually unexpected and so the researcher has no way of controlling what happened to the participant before or during the injury. The researcher has no knowledge of the individual’s memory before the damage so it is difficult to judge how much worse it is after the damage.

Conflicting Research: Buckner and Peterson (1996) concluded the semantic memory is located on the left side of the prefrontal cortex and episodic memory on the right. On the other hand, other research links the left prefrontal cortex with encoding of episodic memories and the right prefrontal cortex with episodic retrieval.

Real World Application: Understanding LTM allows psychologists to help people with memory problems. Research has shown memory loss seems to be specific to episodic memory. Belleville et al (2006) devised an intervention to improve episodic memory in older people and the trained participants performed better on a test of episodic memory after training than the control group.