2.3 types of long term memory 💚

— proposed by Tulving, suggests the MSM is too simplistic —

Episodic memory

  • ability to recall events

  • Time stamped, includes several elements which are interwoven (people, places, objects and behaviours), must make conscious effort to recall these memories

Semantic memory

  • contains our shared knowledge of the world

  • Not time stamped, less personal and it less vulnerable to distortion and forgetting than episodic memory

Procedural memory

  • memory for how we do things

  • Recalled without much conscious awareness

Case study - Clive Wearing

  • has a severe form of amnesia. He can play the piano, but can remember learning to play. He recognises his wife, but cannot remember the last time he’s seen her and thinks its been years

  • Shows his procedural and semantic is intact but his episodic is not

Evaluation

Clinical evidence

  • case study of Clive Wearing. Can play the piano but cannot remember learning to play. shows his procedural and semantic memory is intact but his episodic is not

  • Counterpoint — lack control over variables as there’s no way of controlling what happened to the participant before or after injury, and has no knowledge of their memory before the accident

Conflicting neuroimaging evidence

  • Buckner and Peterson found that semantic memory is located in the left side of the prefrontal cortex, and episodic is on the right

  • However tulving found that the episodic is encoded in the left prefrontal cortex and retrieved in the right prefrontal cortex

Real world application

  • found episodic memories are more likely to become distorted so interventions have been put into place to improve episodic memory in older people

  • The participants performed better on a test after training in comparison to a control group

Same or different

  • tulving recently suggested that episodic memory is a specialised subcategory of semantic memory (so essentially the same store)

  • Concluded that its not possible to have a functioning episodic memory with a damaged semantic memory

  • However Patterson found that some people with Alzheimer’s could form new episodic memories but not semantic, showing Tulvings claims are false