Schmolck et al (2002) - AO1 summary info

Yo,

Here is a good summary for the AO1 part of Schmolck's study:

Schmolck (2002)

Aim

To look at the relationship between performance on semantic memory tasks and the extent of temporal lobe damage to find out to what extent is it involved in semantic memory

Specifically to look at HM’s performance to see what was different from the performance of the other patients with brain damage

Procedure:

 

Participants

Six patients with amnesia were compared to eight ‘normal’ participants

3 patients had encephalitis leading to their amnesia (EP, GP, GT) who had large medial temporal lobe damage and varying damage to their anterolateral temporal cortex (MTL+)

HM- who had lateral MTL damage

2 patients with amnesia caused by damage in their hippocampal formation (HF)

They gave semantic knowledge tests to patients who had damage to the MTL and to the ALTC (they varied in damage, measured by an MRI scan or fMRI scan).

They also used patients with damage to the hippocampal formation (which is within the MTL)…so they looked at those who had whole MTL damage and those who just had damage to one part.

Testing procedure:

They conducted 9 tests over 5 different sessions

Seven were from the semantic test battery and two constructed by the researcher

48 items were used – 24 objects and 24 animals. These were further categorised into categories: domestic land animals, foreign land animals, water animals, birds, electrical household items, non-household electrical items, vehicles, and musical instruments (these are the ‘objects’ or ‘drawings’ etc in the tests)

 

Results

Tasks 1-9:

•       Those with Hippocampus damage (HF) were able to name, point out, and answer questions about objects they were given with considerable accuracy. (Similarly to the control group)

•       Those with MTL+ performed less well. They also had difficulty thinking of examples from a category e.g. dog breeds

 

•       HM did the worst (in MTL group)

•       The MTL+ found it most difficult to identify and recall facts about living objects compared to non-living objects in all tasks.

Tasks 10-13

-MTL+ performed well (but one made 8 errors)

-All MTL+ scored well on the colouring task

MTL+ & HM scored below 90% on the palm tree task

MTL+ produced regular plurals and verbs but performed less well at producing irregular verbs and plurals. HM was fine in both

 

Conclusions

The MTL+ patient data shows that damage to the anterolateral temporal cortex is consistent with loss of semantic knowledge that results in ‘blurring’ or overlap of conceptual knowledge that leads to confusion.

Semantic knowledge is associated with the anterolateral region and not the medial temporal lobe.

 

 

 

KOP!