Summary notes describing Tulving's theory of Types of Long Term Memory. These notes include a concise description of each part of the model, with summary notes of the case study of Clive Wearing.
It is based on the Multi-Store Model idea of LTM, but it suggests there is a difference between
episodic memory (e.g. remembering a family holiday in Disneyland) and more general memory (eg
knowing that Disneyland is in Florida).
Tulving makes a distinction between different types of LTM: proce-
dural memory and declarative memory.
Procedural Memory - The memory of how to do things.
It includes tying shoelaces, writing, tapping in your banking PIN
and using a knife and fork. You may retain procedural memories
even after you have forgotten being taught to do these things in the
first place.
Declarative Memory - The memory of meaningful events.
You might remember being taught to play the guitar, even if you’ve forgotten how to do it. Tulving
splits declarative memory into two sub-types:
1. Episodic memory is the memory of particular events and specific information: events, names
and dates. It includes memories of things that have happened to you and information like a per-
son’s address.
2. Semantic memory is the memory of relationships and how things fit together. It includes the
memory that you have brothers or sisters, where things are located and what they do.
RESEARCH INTO LONG TERM MEMORY
THE CASE OF CLIVE WEARING
- Clive Wearing is a musician who suffered brain damage from a viral infection (herpes simplex
encephalitis) in 1985.
- He suffered almost complete amnesia. He also lost the ability to encode new long term memories.
Clive Wearing forgets everything within 30 seconds and is always “coming into consciousness”,
feeling he is waking up for the first time.
- 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 (even if she has only been gone for a
minute). Although he has no episodic memories of Deborah, he has semantic knowledge of her:
he remembers that he loves her.
- 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.
- Sir Colin Blakemore (1988) carried out a case study on Clive Wearing. Blakemore discovered
that damage to Clive Wearing’s brain had been to the hippocampus, which seems to be the part of
the brain where the Short Term Memory (STM) rehearses information to encode it into LTM.
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