Types of long-term memory - Memory Psychology

A limitation of the MSM is that it describes LTM as a single store. Endel Tulving (1985) argues that the MSM’s view is too simplistic and instead LTM has 3 different information stores:

1.     Episodic: this is the memory store for personal events (eg. a birth of someone, GCSE results day ect.). It is explicit (requires conscious thought to recall) and declarative (a factual memory ie. you know that something happened). It is very detailed and includes who, what, when, the feelings, the weather ect. It’s often referred to as ‘time-stamped memories’.

2.     Semantic: this is the memory store for our knowledge of the world (eg. world knowledge, birthday date, home address ect.). We are consciously aware that we’re using our memory. It is explicit and declarative.

3.     Procedural: this is the memory of how to do something (eg. how to write, ride a bike, drive ect) – in other words, it is a memory of learnt skills. It requires no conscious or deliberate effort to recall, and is usually acquired through repetition and practice. It is implicit (doesn’t require conscious thought) and is non-declarative.

EVALUATION:

P: There is supporting evidence

E: HM and Clive Wearing both suffered from massive impairment to their episodic memory, due to amnesia – however, their semantic memories (eg. understanding the meanings of words) were mostly unaffected and their procedural memories (eg. Clive could still play the piano) were fine.

E: This shows that if one store is damaged, the others can remain unaffected – which supports Endel Tulving’s view that in LTM there are different memory stores, that are located in different parts of the brain.

P: There is neuroimaging evidence to support this view – such as brain scans which show evidence of different types of memory stores in different parts of the brain.

E: Tulving et al (1994) asked participants to perform memory tasks whilst having PET brain scans. It was found that episodic memories came from the right prefrontal cortex – whilst semantic memories came from the left pre-frontal conrtex.

E: This suggests that physically LTM stores feature in different parts of the brain, and so there must be different stores for each of them. This has been confirmed in later research studies – suggesting validity of the findings.

P: It is unclear how many types of LTM there are.

E: Cohen and Squire (1980) argue that episodic and semantic memories are stored together (called ‘declarative’ memory)

E: This means that validity needs to be questioned due to the un-clarity of how many store LTM consists of.