Tulvings gold study

• Aim

  to see whether episodic memories produced blood flow in different areas of the brain to semantic memories
• Method

  6 volunteers including him and his wife

  injected radioactive gold to identify brain activity on PET scans

  repeated measure design = completed 4 episodic tasks and 4 semantic tasks

  episodic task = think of a personal experience

  semantic task = recall a historic fact
• Results

  clear differences in blood flow patterns for 3/6 participants

  semantic memories produced more blood flow in the back of the brain

  episodic memories produced more blood flow in the front of the brain
• Conclusion

  episodic and semantic memories are separate forms of long term memory

  located in different areas of the brain
• strength

  used an objective measurement

  used brain scans which can't be questioned and provide factual evidence and results weren't influenced by his opinion
• weakness

  -can't be generalised

  contained only 6 people including himself so results can't be applied to everyone

  -only 3 participants supported his theory

  shows not everyone shows different brain area activity when accessing different memories