Outline and evaluate different types of long-term memory

• Outline and evaluate different types of long-term memory AO1 - Episodic:

  ‘Autobiographical memory’

  • Stores personal experiences associated with specific time/place (e.g. driving test, first date).
  • Stronger the emotion felt when memory was encoded = better they are recalled. (Explains why traumatic events often well remembered) .
  • Medial temporal lobe (hippocampus) needed for episodic memories. Prefrontal cortex needed for encoding, neocortexneeded for consolidation and storage.
• Outline and evaluate different types of long-term memory AO1 -Semantic:

  General world knowledge

  (e.g. types of food, capital cities, vocabulary).

  • Unclear which brain areas involved, some believe hippocampus, others believe frontal and temporal lobes
  • Memrories started as epesodic but overtime become semantic as lose emotional meaning.
• Outline and evaluate different types of long-term memory AO1 - Procedural:

  Action/skills based memory, enables us to remember procedure for carrying out action (riding a bike, tying shoelaces).

  • Associated with neocortex brain areas (primary motor cortex, cerebellum, prefrontal cortex).
• Outline and evaluate different types of long-term memory (16 marks)

  Table

  
• AO3 - Scientific evidence to support the idea of different types of LTM

  Petersen et al.

  • demonstrated that semantic memories were recalled from the left prefrontal cortex, whilst episodic memories were recalled from the right prefrontal cortex.
  • This supports not only the idea that there are different types of LTM, but shows that they each have a different neurological basis because they are recalled from different parts of the brain
• AO3 -Real life application for patients treatments for impaired  LTM


  
  

  • Real life application: Identifying different types of LTM have helped psychologists to target different kinds of LTM to improve lives.
  • Belleville et al (2006) devised a training plan for elderly people whose episodic memory was in decline.
  • The training improved their episodic memory, in comparison to a control group, on later tests.
  • This suggests there are different types of long term memories that can have targeted treatments if impaired.
• AO3 - In depth case studies to support idea of separate LTM stores

  • The cases of HM and Clive Wearing show how one type of LTM may be impaired (episodic), but the other types of LTM will be unaffected.
  • For example, Clive Wearing was still able to play the piano and understand music (procedural / semantic) but was unable to remember his wife visiting him 5 minutes previously (episodic).
  • This gives support to the idea that different areas of the brain are involved in the different types of LTM, and confirms the classification of different types of LTM as separate
  • CA: CASE STUDY ISSUE
• AO3 - Counter argument of using case studies to evaluate different LTM stores


  • Case studies use such small numbers of participants that they can be said to lack external validity.
  • This means that such findings can't be generalised to a wider population. 
  • We can’t assume cause and effect because there are lots of variables (or differences) that exist between H.M and Clive wearing that we can’t control for, such as the specific area of the brain damaged.
  • This means that we can't be sure that a specific part of the brain is responsible for different types of memory
• AO3 - Supported by research evidence (H.M)


  • Hippocampus removed to cure epilepsy.
  • Could form new procedural memories, unable to form semantic/episodic memories.
• AO3 - Different brain areas active depending on task.


  • Prefrontal cortex – procedural, shows different types of LTM.

  Evidence from brain scans valuable, cant be influenced by demand characteristics/investigator effects. Findings highly valid, strong evidence to support existence of more than one type of LTM.