types of long term memory

• 3 types of long term memory

  • episodic
  • semantic
  • procedural
• episodic memories allow ability to recall events from lives which tend to be time stamped and made up of elements such as who I was with, also likely to remember emotions felt
• semantic memories include the knowledge about the world which are constantly being added to, dont remember when these happened due to there being no time stamp
• semantic memories tend to be less personal due to them being more generic and shared with others
• semantic memories can start of as episodic but then association is lost and so they then become semantic
• procedural memories are those for actions, skills and how to do things
• procedural memories are recalled with little effort due to most actions being automatic (typing up shoelace)
• it is known to be tricky to explain procedural memory tasks to others
• evaluation for types of long term memory - clinical evidence

  • research supporting findings of there being different types of LTM
  • HM + Clive Wearing had trouble recalling episodic memories but both semantic and procedural were unaffected (knew what dog was but couldnt recall stroking one half hour ago)
  • supports there being different types of LTM -shows when one memory store is damaged the others can go unaffected
  • therefore case studies provide evidence for there being different types of LTM as well as evidence that LTM is stored in different parts of brain
• evaluation for types of long term memory - neuroimaging evidence

  • evidence from brain scan studies which suggest there are different types of memory stores in different regions of brain
  • researcher took PET scans of participants brains whilst they performed memory tasks and found episodic and semantic memories were recalled from prefrontal cortex
  • episodic memories recalled from right prefrontal cortex
  • semantic memories recalled from left prefrontal cortex
  • evidence provides support that there are separate memory LTM types within brain
• evaluation for types of long term memory - declarative memory

  • questions as to whether there are 3 types of long term memory
  • cohen and squire disagree with idea of 3 types of LTM
  • they agree that procedural memories are 1 type of LTM but argue episodic and semantic are stored together in 1 LTM called declarative memories
  • limitation because evidence is not 100% clear about whether declarative memory is a thing or not
• declarative memories are those which are consciously recalled