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TYPES OF LONG TERM MEMORY
More than one long-term store?
A unitary LTM is also unsatisfactory when considering the long-term storage of very
different skills, routines and procedures. According to Tulving there are different
kinds of LTM, to hold different types of information.
LONG TERM MEMORY
Cohen and Squire (1980) distinguish between procedural knowledge (a physical,
motor skill like swimming or typing, etc.) and declarative knowledge (general
knowledge drawn from past experience i.e. episodic memory + semantic memory).
Procedural Knowledge
Memory for procedural knowledge is shown through skilled performance. When
acquiring new motor skills there is an initial reliance on episodic and semantic memory
which is followed by procedural learning, for example, when you learn keyboard skills,
initially there is a slow process of learning where each letter is and consciously
thinking about their positions. Later, the knowledge about letter positions is ‘in the
touch’, so that experienced typists actually have to imagine typing a certain letter in
order to tell you where it is on the keyboard.
Research Evidence
Evidence for this has come from studying amnesiacs suffering from Korsakoff’s
syndrome. These patients could not recall people or events from the same day, they
had no ability to form new LTMs. They had impaired declarative knowledge.
When procedural learning was investigated, the results were different. The ‘patients’
were able to learn motor skills as well as ‘normal’ individuals. Also Korsakoff patients
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who spent a long time developing a skill, such as playing the piano, often deny ever
having seen the piano before, when they arrive for each lesson. These patients
seemed to have an intact ability to store procedural knowledge in LTM and an inability
to store declarative knowledge.
Episodic Memory
Episodic memory is memory for personal events we have experienced ourselves e.g.
your first kiss, a special holiday you took. These memories may be linked to a specific
time and place ( see autobiographical memory)
Semantic Memory
Semantic memory is all your general knowledge about the world, e.g. it’s cold in
winter, Cardiff is the capital of Wales, psychology is the study of mind and behaviour
etc
Research Evidence
Parkin (1982) has argued that amnesic patients provide the strongest evidence for
the distinction between episodic and semantic memory. Amnesic patients have
unimpaired language skills, including vocabulary and grammar, and they perform at
normal level in IQ tests. These skills suggest that their semantic memory is intact.
However, they often forget what has happened to them only a few hours earlier,
which suggests a deficit in the ability to store new information in episodic memory.
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