Tulving LTM

• Episodic memory 


  > our ability to recall events from our life

  > they’re complex

  > they’re time stamped

  > each ‘episode‘ contains many elements ( people, places, objects and behaviour)
• semantic memory 


  > stores ‘facts’ we learn in life

  > necessary for us to use language

  > Tulving says its less vulnerable to distortion & forgetting

  > constantly being added too
• arguments against Tulvings LTM


  > clinical studies that support this (HM case and Tulvings case study) lack control of variables - don’t know their memory before the brain damage

  > reduced validity of clinical trials about LTM
• Tulvings case study KF


  KF experienced a bike accident and their hippocampus was destroyed

  > he lost all episodic memory

  > could remember the things he learnt in books (dates, facts, definitions)
• Tulving (2002)

  > came to view episodic as a ‘specialised subcategory‘ of semantic memory
• issues and debates of tulvings LTM


  > research is sensitive to society

  > Alzheimer’s, people who went through brain damage - can threaten the dignity of the patients
• applications of Tulvings LTM 


  > explains false memories:

  . episodic memory gets changed by being used

  > cognitive simulation theory:

  . showing patients meaningful things to get them to talk about the meaning

  > student revision

  . episodic is specific to that time and place you encode it and

  semantic can be recalled anywhere

  . learn in the classroom (episodic) then revise at home to get put in semantic