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Long-Term Memory • What is the capacity of LTM? • Is LTM all the same? • What can you do to improve your LTM? Long-Term Memory • Long duration • 90% recognition of high school classmates after 34 years (Bahrick,Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975) • Retention of Spanish after 50 years (Bahrick, 1984) LTM: Capacity • Very high capacity • Interference in recall Types of Long Term Memory (Tulving,1985) • Declarative (Explicit) Memory – Episodic Memory – Semantic Memory • Implicit – Priming Effects – Procedural Memory Instructions for Group 1 • Group 2: close your eyes! • Group 1: – You will see a list of words. – For each word, write down Y if it has the letter O in it, and write down N if it does not. – Don’t write down the words! – Close your eyes now! Instructions for Group 2 • Group 1: close your eyes! • Group 2: – You will see a list of words. – For each word, write down Y if it is something you could buy at a convenience store, and write down N if it is not. – Don’t write down the words! Word List umbrella gasoline orchestra yacht hammer diamond university macaroni garden underwear newspaper alcohol bouquet microscope camouflage pollution insect elephant sulphur lemonade mosquito bottle eyeglasses restaurant Levels of Processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) • Deep processing leads to better memory than shallow processing • Self-reference Effect (Rogers, 1975) • What counts as deep or shallow? • Try to recall as many words from the list as you can. Transfer from STM to LTM • Long-Term Potentiation: enhanced firing in postsynaptic neuron after learning; occurs esp. in hippocampus (Kandel, 2001) • Consolidation: may take several years (Squire, 1986) • Medial-temporal lobe activity predicts recall (Brewer et al., 1988) A User’s Guide to Memory • Match your encoding process with the expected retrieval process (TransferAppropriate Processing) • Match encoding context with retrieval context (State-Dependent Learning) – Location (Godden & Baddeley, 1975) – Mood (Eich & Metcalfe, 1989) A User’s Guide to Memory • Rich encoding provides many retrieval cues (Encoding Specificity) • Spread encoding out over multiple short times (distributed practice) • Organization (Bower et al., 1969) A User’s Guide to Memory • Mnemonics – Method of Loci – Peg Word – Acrostics Evolutionary Psychology • Why do we remember so well, for so long? • Why don’t we remember everything?