Long Term Memory

• How many types is the LTM divided into?

  2
• What are the 2 types of the LTM

  Explicit - Declarative

  Implicit - Procedural
• What does the Declarative part of the LTM do?

  Processes Knowledge and Understanding
• What does the Implicit part of the LTM do?

  Being able to remember processes in order to do things.
• What is the Episodic memory responsible for?

  Personal experiences and events.

  • They are time-stamped.
  • It takes a conscious effort to retrieve since they are relatively vague to begin with.
• What is the Semantic Memory responsible for?

  General knowledge and facts of the world.

  - Memories are not time stamped.

  - We do not remember when we learnt them because they are less personal.

  • Retrieval may need some conscious effort but can be automatic
  • EG. Functions of objects and appropriate behaviour in situations.
• Is the Episodic Memory explicit or implit?

  Explicit
• What is the Procedural Memory responsible for?

  Stores knowledge of how to do things. i.e - Memories of learned skills such as riding a bicycle.

  • Recalled easily without conscious effort
  • Not actively thought about.
  • Do things without being disrupted.
• Is the procedural memory explicit or implicit?

  Implicit
• Why is the procedural memory considered implicit?

  Because actions are not actively thought about
• What did Tulving 1985 say?

  LTM is more complex and there are 3 LTM stores with each of them being responsible for processing information
• What Case study supports Tulving's theory?

  Clive Wearing
• How does Clive Wearing support that there are 3 LTM stores as proposed by Tulving?

  He had Anterograde amnesia.

  Clive could not remember personal events such as his wedding day - His episodic memory was damaged.

  He could remember he was married (less personal more general knowledge) - Semantic memory still intact.

  He could still play piano but he couldn't remember the notes or how he was able to play - Procedural memory still intact and functioning.
• Evaluation of Types of Long Term Memory

  1. Brain scars are very reliable.
  2. Case study provides proof that there are distinct stores in the memory.
  3. Hodges and Patterson 2007/ Irish et al - study of Alzheimer's patient's who could form new episodic memories but not semantic memories - shows a distinction between 2 stores: Supports there multiple stores in LTM
• Supporting Evidence for types of LTM

  HM - Suffered a brain damage after removal of hippocampus from both sides of his brain in attempt to reduce epilepsy.

  • After surgery, he could not form certain long-term memories, despite being able to remember things that had happened before the surgery took place.
  • Not longer able to form semantic or episodic memory.
  • He could still form procedural. e.g. He would be thought how to draw a self-portrait using his own reflection but would not remember how he was thought but could still it.
• Why is the temporal lobe (hippocampus) Important

  They are areas of the brain that are responsible for emotions and personal experience.

  -The temporal lobe is important for tasks such as language /understanding - making it important when processing semantic memories.
• What part of the brain is associated with Procedural memories

  Cerebellum and Motor Cortex
• What is the capacity of the LTM

  Unlimited
• How is the LTM encoded?

  Semantically
• Duration of the LTM

  Lifetime - Unlimited
• Which researcher did research into the duration of the LTM

  Bahrick 1975
• What was Bahrick's procedure?

  Studied 392 american ex-high school students aged 17-74.

  Tested recall in various ways.

  E.g.

  -Photo recognition test which consisted of 50 photos.

  -Free recall: participants were to recall the names of those in graduating class.
• What was Bahrick's findings?

  Photo Recognition

  90% accuracy after 15 years.

  70% accuracy after 48 years.

  Free Recall

  60% accuracy after 15 years.

  30% accuracy after 48 years.
• What was Bahrick's Conclusion

  Information in the LTM are rarely forgotten but cues may be needed sometimes in order to remember.
• Good Evaluation Point for Bahrick's study

  High Mundane Realism

  - The information used to test the LTM duration is a real life material and has accurate way of measuring how memory work in real life.
• Negative Evaluation Points for Bahrick's Study

  It was done in a small town so some of the participants may have still be in contact - this makes the experiment lack in validity. This is because the years the memory was being tested would be invalid meaning the findings cannot be relied on.
• Who did the research in coding of LTM

  Baddeley