types of LTM

• Supporting from clinical studies of patients, such as HM and Clive Wearing, with amnesia.

  HM displaying normal functioning in his semantic memory, but impaired functioning in his episodic memory.

  Clive Wearing was a professional musician and could play the piano without difficulty, however he could not remember learning to play and this suggests his episodic memory was impaired but his procedural memory was functioning normally.

  Both of these cases support the idea of a clear separation of different types of LTM.
• Also evidence from brain scan studies that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain.

  Tulving et al. asked participants to perform various tasks during a PET scan.

  They found that semantic memories involved the left prefrontal cortex and episodic memories involved the right PFC.

  Supports the theory as it shows there is a physical reality to the different LTM stores. This gives the theory scientific credibility and since the findings have been confirmed many times in later research, the validity of the findings have been supported.
• Understanding types of LTM allows for the development of helpful real world applications.

  Belleville et al. (2006) demonsrated that episodic memories could be improved in older people had a mild cognitive impairment and were given memory training while a control group did not.

  It was found that the experimental group performed better on a test of episodic memory.

  This understanding provides psychologists with the opportunity to improve people's lives by devising appropriate treatments.