Types of Long Term Memory

• Procedural Memory

  • Memories for motor skills and movement
  • Non-declarative - hard to explain the skill e.g riding a bike
  • Can recall the memory without conscious awareness
• Episodic Memory

  • Refers to memories relating to a specific episode or event in your life
  • They are time stamped
  • Must make a conscious effort to recall episodic memories
• Semantic Memory

  • Our knowledge of the world e.g what an orange tastes like
  • Fact based memories for meaningful information
  • Not time stamped as it is less personal and it is less prone to distortion than episodic
• Differences between types of long term memory 


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• AO3 Types of Long Term Memory: Case Study HM

  • Provides evidence for different types of long term memory
  • HM was involved in a bike accident that gave him epilepsy and it worsened to the point he got surgery
  • Whilst removing part of the brain to get rid of his seizures it impacted his memory - he got anterograde amnesia
  • His procedural memory was intact but his semantic and episodic memories were not
• AO3: Types of Long Term Memory: Clive Wearing

  • Had both anterograde and retrograde amnesia
  • Lost his episodic and semantic memories
  • His procedural memory is intact as he can remember how to play the piano
  • Supports the idea there are different types of long term memory
• AO3 Types of Long Term Memory: Conflicting Evidence on LTM

  • There are conflicting findings linking types of LTM to areas of the brain
  • Some researchers reviewed evidence regarding the location of semantic and episodic memory and found that semantic memory is located in the left side of the prefrontal cortex and episodic on the right
  • This challenges any evidence to support types of memory as there is poor agreement on where they are located
• AO3 Types of Long Term Memory: Real World Application

  • Understanding types of LTM allows psychologists to help people with memory problems
  • As people age they experience memory loss and research has shown this seems to be specific to episodic memory – it becomes harder to recall memories of personal events that occurred relatively recently compared to past episodic memories
  • A researcher did an intervention to improve episodic memories in older people
  • The trained PPs did better on a test of episodic memory than control group
  • Enables specific treatments to be developed