Long Term Memory

• Bahrick - Duration research

  Participants are asked to name photos of classmates either by free recall or matching

  Recall better when recognising than free recall

  Suggests LTM lasts for decades
• Bahrick - strengths

  Large sample so more representative findings

  Lab study so more control and internal validity

  Mundane realism
• Bahrick - Weakness

  Not culturally diverse

  Lack internal validity due to individual differences and inability to control yearbook
• Baddeley - Encoding research

  Procedure - Participants have to recall a list of semantically similar, acoustically similar and dissimilar words after 20 minutes

  Findings - The semantically similar words became jumbled and recall was lower

  LMT encodes semantically
• Baddeley - Strengths

  Lab study so controlled therefore high internal validity
• Baddeley - Weakness

  Not really measuring LTM (20 minutes isnt LTM)

  Lacks ecological validity / mundane realism
• Tulving (1985) 


  Found three types of LTM - Procedural, Episodic, Semantic
• Procedural

  Motor memories for actions and learned behaviours

  Implicit and Resistant to forgetting

  ‘Not available for conscious inspection’
• Episodic

  Events with emotional significance

  Explicit and declarative

  ‘Available for conscious inspection’
• Semantic

  Things and knowledge we can explicitly talk about

  Declarative

  ‘Available for conscious inspection’
• Evaluation of Memory types

  Evidence from Clive Wearing - had an accident and is still able to play piano but not recall life events - supports distinction between procedural and episodic

  However a single case study may not apply to everyone (population validity)
• Evaluation of Memory Types

  Evidence from neuroimaging - scans show episodic and semantic in prefrontal cortex, and procedural in the cerebellum - supports credibility of different LTMs

  However scans are based on blood flow which isn't a direct measure