Types of LTM

Types of LTM

1. Explicit Memory (conscious)

   • Declarative memory (facts and figures and concepts and events)
     • Episodic memory (events and experiences)
     • Semantic Memory (facts and concepts)

2. Implicit Memory (unconscious)

   • Procedural Memory (skills and habits)
     • how to ride a bike or how to talk

3. Episodic LTM

   • episodes in life, autobiographic record of life
     • birthdays, school days etc
   • strength is influenced by emotions and degree of processing at coding
     • Traumatic events are well recalled due to high emotion content
   • helps people distinguish difference between real and imaginative events
   • all memories of an event stored in diff parts are connected at hippocampus
   • Tulving: differentiating episodic and semantic
     • people injected with radio active gold
       • researcher and family and collegues
         • half had inconlusive data, not generalisable
         • hard to analyse results objectively
       • injected 60 secs after memory retrieved and scanned 8 secs later
     • performed tasks, semantic and episodic
     • appears in separate parts of the brain and forms of LTM
     • Evaluation
       • Impaired LTM leads to damage to frontal lobes
       • successful use of neuro imaging - studying cognitive processes in live humans
   • females do better in episodic LTM tasks, they're more emotional?
   • overlaps w Semantic

4. Semantic LTM

   • strength of it is based on how well it was processed during coding
   • linked to episodic - knowledge learnt from experience
   • 8yo girl damaged part of her brain, remembered semantic memory but not episodic
     • in diff parts of brain
   • network of links, some links are stronger than others or more easy to access

5. Procedural LTM

   • used to perform tasks w little conscious thought
   • difficult to explain in words (non-declarative)
   • occur early in life - motor skills
   • involved in languages
     • semantic and procedural work together
   • doesn't need the hippocampus to function
   • can take longer to learn
   • stored separately