Transcript history
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?