What are the different types of long-term memory?
Types of long-term memory: episodic, semantic and procedural.
Covers AQA 4.2 types of long-term memory: episodic (personal events), semantic (knowledge and facts) and procedural (skills), with supporting evidence and evaluation.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
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What this dot point is asking
AQA wants you to describe the three types of long-term memory and how they differ, with supporting evidence. The exam skill is to keep episodic and semantic distinct (time-stamping), to identify procedural memory as unconscious, and to use case study and brain-scanning evidence for the distinction.
The three types
Tulving challenged the multi-store model's idea of long-term memory as one unitary store, proposing instead that there are qualitatively different types. Episodic and semantic memories are both explicit (declarative), meaning they can be consciously recalled and put into words, but they differ in content and time-stamping. Episodic memory stores specific personal events from your own life, complete with their context (where you were, who you were with) and the emotions you felt, and it is time-stamped because you remember roughly when it happened, such as a recent birthday. Semantic memory stores shared, general knowledge of the world: facts, concepts and the meanings of words, such as knowing that London is a capital city, and this knowledge is not tied to a particular moment of learning. Procedural memory is different in kind, being implicit (non-declarative): it stores motor skills and actions, such as riding a bike or typing, and is recalled automatically without conscious effort, which is why such skills are hard to put into words. Episodic and semantic memories are linked, because over time episodic memories can lose their time-stamp and become semantic knowledge.
Evidence
The strongest evidence for separate types comes from cases where brain damage spares one type while destroying another (a dissociation). HM and Clive Wearing both lost the ability to form new episodic memories, yet their procedural memory was largely intact: Clive Wearing could still play the piano and conduct, even though he could not recall having learned to, and HM could improve at new motor skills despite having no memory of practising them. Because the types can be damaged independently, they must be at least partly separate systems, which is the central argument. Brain-scanning provides converging evidence: Tulving's PET studies found that episodic and semantic memories activate different regions of the prefrontal cortex (the left for semantic, the right for episodic), supporting a biological distinction. The real-world value of this distinction is also an evaluation point: identifying which type of memory is impaired allows targeted interventions, for example in age-related memory decline, where episodic memory tends to deteriorate while procedural memory is relatively preserved.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of AQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AQA 20194 marksDistinguish between episodic and semantic long-term memory. Use an example of each.Show worked answer →
A 4-mark item (about 2 AO1 each). Markers want the contrast plus a matched example.
Episodic memory is a conscious (explicit) memory of personal events from one's own life, including the context, the people present and the emotions felt, and it is "time-stamped" (linked to when it happened). Example: remembering your first day at school. Semantic memory is a conscious (explicit) memory of facts, concepts and the meanings of things, shared general knowledge that is not tied to a particular time or place. Example: knowing that Paris is the capital of France.
The discriminator is whether the memory is a personal, time-stamped event (episodic) or general knowledge with no time-stamp (semantic). A full-mark answer defines both, notes the time-stamping difference, and gives a matched example for each.
AQA 20216 marksDescribe the three types of long-term memory and explain one piece of evidence that supports the distinction.Show worked answer →
A 6-mark item, roughly 4 AO1 and 2 AO2.
Types: episodic memory stores time-stamped personal events and is consciously recalled; semantic memory stores facts and general knowledge and is also consciously recalled but not time-stamped; procedural memory stores skills and actions and is recalled unconsciously and automatically (such as riding a bike).
Evidence: the patient HM (and Clive Wearing) had severely impaired episodic memory but largely intact procedural memory, since they could still perform learned skills despite being unable to recall personal events. This shows the types are separate, because brain damage can affect one while sparing another. Markers reward the three types with their key features (especially conscious versus unconscious recall) and a relevant case study used as evidence.
Related dot points
- The multi-store model of memory: sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory. Features of each store: coding, capacity and duration.
Covers AQA 4.2 the multi-store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin): the sensory register, short-term and long-term memory, and the coding, capacity and duration of each store.
- The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
Covers AQA 4.2 the working memory model (Baddeley and Hitch): central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer, with coding and capacity.
- Explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference and retrieval failure due to absence of cues.
Covers AQA 4.2 explanations for forgetting: proactive and retroactive interference, and retrieval failure due to absence of cues (context-dependent and state-dependent forgetting).
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Covers AQA 4.2 eyewitness testimony: how misleading information (leading questions, post-event discussion) and anxiety affect accuracy, using Loftus and Palmer and others.
- Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of the cognitive interview.
Covers AQA 4.2 improving eyewitness testimony: the cognitive interview (Fisher and Geiselman), its four techniques, the enhanced cognitive interview, and evaluation.
Sources & how we know this
- AQA A-level Psychology (7182) specification — AQA (2015)