Evolution Of Memory Essay

Memory is a very complicated aspect to cognition. There are three types of memory sensory memory, short-term (working) memory, and long-term memory. A significant amount of research has been done each of the types of memory. Long-term memory has been divided into two types of long-term memory; declarative (explicit) memory and nondeclarative (implicit) memory. Declarative or explicit memory includes semantic and episodic memory; these are the memories you know you have and are consciously aware of. Nondeclarative or implicit memory includes things like procedural memory, priming, classical conditioning, and nonassociative learning; you are not consciously aware of these memories. Individuals with amnesia, either retrograde or anterograde, …show more content…
Their participants included patients with alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome and participants whose amnesia was caused by anoxia, encephalitis, bilateral thalamic infarction, and status epilepticus following head injury (Gabrieli et. Al, 1997). Participants were shown word pairs and then were given a word-pair identification test; they were asked to identify word pairs presented for a certain duration or select which of three words they thought appeared with the given word (Gabrieli et. Al, 1997). For the identification part, they found that priming was intact for the amnesic patients and they were better able to identify old pairs (the original word pair) better than a recombined pairs (same first word with a new second word) and recombined better than novel word pairs (Gabrieli et. Al, 1997). When given the recognition test, the control group was more accurate than the amnesic group. They were unable to select old choices better than recombined indicating that they could not demonstrate explicit memory (Gabrieli et. Al,