ltm

Types of Long Term Memory

• Evidence for separate components of LTM from patients with brain damage:
• Clive Wearing - A musician with a brain infection which damaged his hippocampus and left him with a seriously impaired STM of only 7-30 seconds. CW still had the ability to play the piano (procedural memory) but couldn't remember that he could play it (semantic/episodic memory).
• HM - Had his hippocampus removed and could not create new long term memories, however he could still learn new skills (mirror drawing), suggesting his procedural memory was unaffected. His cerebellum, which has been associated with the creation of procedural memories, was undamaged by his operation.

Tulving (1972): Types of LTM

• Tulving makes the distinction between semantic and episodic long term memory.
• Semantic memory - The mental encyclopaedia; stores meanings, concepts, facts etc. Data it stored in hierarchies and interlinked.
• Episodic memory - The mental diary; stores experiences and events in a time-based manner.

Evidence for separate components of LTM

• The interactive nature of long term memory stores.
• Different stores in the long term memory can act independently, but in normal everyday life they need to interact.
• An example of this is sitting and exam:
• You need to know how to sit at your desk (procedural)
• Knowledge for that subject (semantic)
• And you may remember what happened in class that day of a particular example that helped you to understand something (episodic)

Evaluation of Tulving's theory

• Evidence supporting other LTM stores, such as declarative and procedural memory.
• Case studies of brain damaged patients (CW and HM) show evidence for different LTM stores.
• Bower (1975) showed that when information is organised semantically rather than in a disorganised fashion recall is improved.
• Case study evidence is limited to the individual experiences of single cases and may not be representative or produce findings that can be generalised to everyone.
• It is difficult to study or experiment on each separate LTM type/store as they are often interchangable and used together.