types of long term memory
Tulving
proposed that there are three LTM stores containing different types of information - episodic, procedural, and semantic
episodic
refers to our ability to recall events (episodes) from our lives, a record of daily happenings
these memories are time stamped - you know when they happened eg. recently, last week, this morning
your memory will include several elements such as people, places, objects, behaviours etc
have to make a conscious effort to recall the memories, aware you are searching for the memory
semantic
contains our knowledge of the world, including facts
been linked to a combination of an encyclopaedia and a dictionary - including things such as applying for university, the taste of an orange, the meaning of words - contains knowledge of an impressive number of concepts
they aren't time stamped and are less personal
procedural
our memory for actions, skills and how we do things
we recall these unconciously, without a great deal of effort
for example, driving a car
find these skills hard to explain to other people because they are common knowledge
evaluation
strength - there is evidence from brain scans that different types of memory are stored in different parts of the brain. Tulving et al got their participants to perform specific memory tasks whilst their brains were scanned using a PET scanner. they found that episodic and semantic memories were both recalled from the brain using the pre-frontal cortex - left = semantic and right = episodic
limitation - Cohen and Squire disagree with Tulvings division of LTM into three parts. they accept that procedural memories are one type of LTM but semantic and episodic memories are stored together in one store called declarative memory - memories recalled consciously and procedural memories are not declarative
strength - the famous case study of HM and Clive Wearing are relevant as episodic memory was in both men - affected by amnesia. they had difficulty recalling memory from the past. the evidence supports Tulvings view that there are different LTM stores. one store can be damaged and the other could be unaffected