Amnesia

Coursework question – First sitting

‘Although cognitive neuropsychology describes conditions such as amnesia, it has failed to improve our understanding of long-term memory’. Critically discuss.

Indicative answer
The advantages of the cognitive neuropsychological approach and core claim (that studies of disorders are informative) investigated by evaluation of whether the amnesia research has contributed successfully.

Core of answer:

Main – The study of amnesia helps identify the underlying structure of long-term memory (declarative, episodic, etc.). On one hand it gives cognitive models some biological reality (e.g., hippocampus) but on the other hand, the research has been arguably less successful with explaining the actual processing and manipulation of information that cognitive science seeks to explain. There are basic method challenges (comparing normal and amnesic memory) and difficulties remain in accounting for what can survive amnesia and why.

Resit- Amnesia provides a test of the cognitive neuropsychological approach and of how useful case studies are in comparison to the neuroimaging of intact participants, and a test of the extent of the neuropsychological contribution to measurement, modelling, and application.

Basic answer (pass)

– should be some account of evidence and the basic idea that evidence from neuropsychology shows that LTM must be subdivided into processes. Should be some acknowledgement of the basic claim in cognitive neuropsychology that the study of disorders can contribute to the understanding of how normal processing works, and that this is a claim.