Long-term Memory

PSY-PC 1205
How do STM and LTM differ?
• STM is limited
• LTM is vast
• How many word meanings do people know? Facts, skills, etc.

• To get info into STM, you just need to pay attention to the material
• Getting info into LTM takes time and effort
• Remember primacy effect?
Baddeley’s model of memory

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Types of Long-term Memory

(declarative)
Explicit Memory
Is flexible, relational, used in various ways; talked about
Episodic (Autobiographical)
• Specific events and
experiences
• Time-stamped
• Known source
Ex. your 5th birthday party,
graduation party

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 Explicit Memory
Is flexible, relational, used in various ways; talked about
Semantic
antenna • Facts
small • Contains no time stamp
drink nectar • Source unknown (you just
wings know it)
Ex. mom’s birth date, meaning of
can fly
the word “special”

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The Case of Kent Cochrane
• Motorcycle accident led him
to suffer amnesia
• Damage to the medial
temporal lobe, include the
left hippocampus
• Could access semantic
memory but not episodic
memory post-accident
• Could not form new memories
Types of Long-term Memory

(declarative) (non-declarative)
Implicit Memory
• Difficult to express in language; used in specific ways
Procedural
• knowing how to do something
Ex. how to ride a bicycle, how to type,
how to use your language

Priming
• implicit learning
• experiencing stimulus multiple
times changes response
Ex. words are read faster second time
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Implicit Memory
• Difficult to express in language; used in specific ways
Perceptual Learning Classical Conditioning
• Learning you need to do when • classical and operant learning
“recalibrating” Ex. associating lights with shock; slot
• It happens without awareness machines
Ex. Adjusting to a new eye prescription

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Types of Long-term Memory

(declarative) (non-declarative)
Strategies for encoding
How can we store information in memory so that we can find it
when we need it?

Three Common Strategies

1. Repetition

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Is Attention Necessary for LTM?
Is it enough to pay attention
to the content for it to be
moved to LTM?
Question: What direction
does Lincoln face on a
penny?
Only 50% of people get this
right! So they’re performing at
chance!

Question: Which is the

correct penny?
Is Attention Necessary for LTM?
• Memory does require attention!
• It requires mental engagement with a target, not mere exposure

But what does it mean to pay attention?

Is Attention Necessary for LTM?
You have to pay attention to the number, but you
have no need to memorize it
You’re likely to use maintenance
rehearsal: repeating info over and
over without thinking about its
meaning or patterns.

What happens if you get a phone call

while you’re typing in the code?
Is Attention Necessary for LTM?
• Establishing info in LTM is not automatic
• You need to do work!
• Think about learning
• Greater levels of activity during the initial memory acquisition
are reliably associated with greater probabilities of recall later
on
• In the hippocampus and regions of the prefrontal cortex but
it also may include brain activity in the parietal cortex
Strategies for encoding
How can we store information in memory so that we can find it
when we need it?

Three Common Strategies

1. Repetition
2. Organization and Elaboration

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Strategies for encoding
• How can we store information in memory so that we can find it
when we need it?
• Common strategies:
• Repetition
• Organization and elaboration

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LTM and Understanding

Shallow Processing Deep Processing

• Memorization that involves • Memorization that involves
focusing on surface-level focusing on meaning
characteristics

In Craik & Tulving (1975), participants recalled very few of the

words that called for shallow processing (capitalization). They
were a bit better with intermediate processing (sound), and best
were at the deepest level (meaning).
LTM and Understanding
Craik & Tulving (1975): participants were probed to process a word
and then completed a recall task

Structure: Is the word in capital letters?

Sound: Does the word rhyme with riddle? fiddle

Meaning: Is the word a type of musical instrument?

Structure < Sound < Meaning

Shallow Intermediate Deep
processing processing processing
Deep Processing
• Give participants material that is difficult to understand
• Immediately check how well participants understood material
• Much later, test the participants memory

• The better the understanding at the time material was presented,

the better the memory later
• Bransford 1979
Shallow Processing
Mnemonics are tools that people use to memorize new information
• Requires establishing memory connections

• Connections by linking letters to first letter of word

• Peg-word systems
• Method of Loci
Linking Letters
Colors of the Rainbow Order of Operations
Peg word system
An organized structure that allows you to “hook” to-be-learned
information on the “pegs”

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Method of Loci
Using mental imagery to visualize information in different spatial
locations
• Memory Palace
More Mnemonics

The Six Wings

• Appears in the Book of Isaiah
• Popular in the 12th century
• Each wing represents a different topic or
subject
• Each feather represents a subtopic or
example

Many Minds: Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering

Why does organization help?
• One type of elaborative encoding
• Linking new information to prior knowledge
• Provides “support” for new information (and cues for how to find it)

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Self- Reference
Self-Relevance Effect ◼ Judgments about one’s
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self lead to better recall
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than other common
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tasks.
% Recall

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◼ Particularly good type of
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elaboration because we
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know a lot about
0

Structural Phonemic Semantic Self-Reference

ourselves.
Orienting Task

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Self-relevant items remembered better

Kramer & Schmidt (2004)

Strategies for encoding
• How can we store information in memory so that we can find it
when we need it?
• Common strategies:
• Repetition
• Organization and elaboration
• Distinctiveness

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What’s Distinctiveness?
• We have distinct memory for odd or unusual information
• Increases memory by
• increasing attention at encoding
• increasing retrievability
• Two major types of distinctiveness
• Primary: with respect to the immediate context
• von Restorff effect
• Secondary: with respect to prior experience
• unusual faces, firsts, etc.

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Primary Distinctiveness
Apple
• Incongruity defined with respect Railway
to immediate context Magazine
• von Restorff Effect or isolation Leather
effect
Tower
BOTTLE
Pupil
Sailor
Diamond
Library
Ticket

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von Restorff Effect
Secondary Distinctiveness
• Incongruous with past experience
• Life experiences
• First day at college
• First time in a big city
• Orthographic distinctiveness
• Words with unusual spellings well remembered
• e.g., khaki, afghan
• Unusual faces
• Unique faces easier to recognize than typical ones

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Summary: Depth of Processing
• Doesn’t matter if you are trying to learn or not: it only matters
what you do
• Encoding better for:
• organized information
• meaning-based information
• information with personal significance
• information that was actively generated

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