Tulving Theory of LTM Flashcards
AO1 ans AO3 (7 cards)
AO1 for Tulving’s Theory of LTM
long term memory, is any memories that are held for longer than 30 seconds.
LTM can be split into 2 separate memory stores: declarative (facts and events that are consciously brought to mind) and procedural memory (skills and tasks without a conscious thought) Declarative memory can be further split into 2: Semantic Memory and Episodic Memory.
Episodic Memories:
- Recall of events and personal life experiences
- autobiographical episodic memories: memories from a particular time in someones life
- experimental episodic memories: when learning a fact has been associated, with memory from the specific time it was learnt.
- Are time referenced, you know when the event happened
- context dependent, you need to use your previous memories to understand.
- localised in the hippocampus
Semantic memories:
- conscious memories of facts, concepts, and meanings that link together (eg: bird and a nest)
- these memories are associated with other facts that link the concepts together: birds and nest, or school and learning.
- not time referenced, you don’t know when you learned the fact
Supporting study of this theory
Clive Wearing
Clive Wearing Case Study:
suffered brain damage from a viral infection. He suffered almost complete amnesia. He also lost the ability to encode new long term memories. Clive Wearing forgets everything within 30 seconds. However, although Clive Wearing has lost his episodic memory, he still has semantic memory.
When his wife Deborah enters the room he greets her joyously, believing he hasn’t seen her for years or even that they are meeting for the first time. Although he has no episodic memories of Deborah, he has semantic knowledge of her: he remembers that he loves her.
Similarly, although he cannot remember their names or ages, (episodic memories) Clive Wearing knows that he is a father and that he has children. (semantic memory)
Clive Wearing also has intact procedural memory. He can still play piano and conduct a choir – although he cannot remember his musical education and as soon as the music stops he forgets he was performing and suffers a shaking fit.
Evaluating Tulving Theory of LTM in terms of Evidence
E- Clinical Evidence comes from the case study of Clive Wearing. He had an impaired episodic memory, but intact semantic memory and procedural memory. He forgets everything within 30 seconds and cannot form new memories. He remembers that he is a father and has children- semantic memory. But cannot remember their names or their ages- episodic memory. He can still play the piano, and conduct a choir- intact procedural memory, but he cannot remember his musical education. As soon as he finished, he cannot remember he was performing- impaired episodic. This evidence supports Tulving’s view about the different types of memory store in the LTM as when one store is damaged the others are unaffected, which also shows that they are stored in different parts of the brain
(CA) Cases such as Clive Wearing are hard to use as evidence as they are case studies (studies of one individual). There is no way to test the memory of such individuals before their brain damage, and it is hard to use one person’s case to apply to the entire population. This weakens the supporting evidence for types of LTM.
Evaluate Tulvings theory interns of: Applications
A- Usually patients suffering from with Alzheimers and Dementia have difficulty forming new memories. Episodic memories are next to go as they begin to forget autobiographical events, and recent episodes are lost. Semantic memories are then lost, as they struggle with language and recognising family members. This supports the idea that LTM has separate stores, as the stores are each lost at separate times. Showing that memories are not stores in in one store otherwise they would be lost all at one time.
Evaluate Tulvings theory interns of: Comparisons
C- It has also been suggested that the medial temporal lobe is used for both episodic and semantic memories, suggesting that they may not be separate stores. Squire and Zola (1998) put this to the test. They examined children with amnesia (who never got a chance to acquire a semantic store in the first place) and adults with amnesia (who had semantic and episodic memories from before suffering brain damage). The participants’ episodic and semantic memories seem to be equally impaired which supports the idea that the two memory functions are linked or even the same thing.
