tulvings gold memory study

• aim

  to investigate whether thinking about episodic memories produced a different blood flow pattern from those produced when thinking about semantic ones
• method

  6 participants injected with radioactive gold. each participant did 4 episodic and semantic trials. blood flow monitored by PET scan
• results

  different blood flow found in 3 out of 6. semantic= more blood flow in posterior cortex episodic= more blood flow in anterior cortex
• conclusion

  episodic and semantic memories are localised in different parts of the brain. memory has a biological bias
• evaluation

  study produced scientific evidence as brain scans are hard to fake- he produced unbiased evidence
• evaluation

  the sample was restricted only 6 participants were used and differences in blood flow were only seen in 3 so inconclusive
• evaluation

  episodic and semantic memories are very similar so its hard to work out what type of memory is being studied results inconclusive