Types of LTM

Types of LTM

1. Tulving in 1972

   • Cognitive psychologist
   • MSM's view of LTM is too simplistic & inflexible

2. Episodic Memory

   • Stores information about personal events
     • People, objects, places and behaviours involved
     • 'Time-stamped'
   • Memories have to be retrieved consciously and with effort

3. Semantic Memory

   • Stores our knowledge of the world
     • Facts, meaning of words and general knowledge
   • Not 'time-stamped'
   • Memories have to be retrieved consciously and deliberately

4. Procedural Memory

   • Stores our knowledge of how to do things
     • Memories of learned skills
   • Recall memories without making a conscious or deliberate effort

5. Evaluation

   • Clinical evidence
     • HM and Clive Wearing studies support this
       • Episodic memory in both men was impaired due to amnesia
       • Semantic memories were relatively unaffected and procedural memory was intact
   • Neuroimaging evidence
     • Brain scan studies show different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain
     • Tulving et al (1994) got participants to do various tasks whilst brains being PET scanned
       • Found that episodic memories were recalled from right prefrontal cortex
       • Found that semantic memories were recalled from left prefrontal cortex
   • Problems with clinical evidence
     • Clinical studies aren't perfect
       • Lack of control of variables
   • Only 2 types of LTM
     • Cohen and Squire (1980) disagree that there are 3 types of LTM
       • Argue that episodic and sematic memories are stored together in 1 LTM store called declarative memory (consciously recalled)