Long-Term Memory: Storage, Retrieval, and Processes

Flashbulb Memories

Flashbulb Memories refer to a very detailed memory of the moment when someone learned about a shocking or emotionally significant event.

Long-Term Memory Functions

Long-Term Memory (LTM) allows for the storage and rapid access to relevant knowledge, which helps us interpret the present and act efficiently.

LTM supports the interpretation and understanding of new situations by drawing on past experiences. It also enables us to make inferences, connect ideas, and derive new information. Additionally, LTM allows for prospective thinking, such as planning for the future and imagining future scenarios.

Finally, LTM provides a sense of self and continuity, connecting past experiences to current identity and giving structure to conscious experience.

Types of Long-Term Memory

Explicit Memory (Declarative Memory)

Explicit memory, also known as declarative memory, involves conscious recall of facts and experiences (e.g., remembering a birthday).

Semantic Memory

General world knowledge (e.g., knowing that Paris is the capital of France).

Episodic Memory

Memory for personally experienced events, including the what, when, and where.

Implicit Memory

Implicit memory influences behavior without conscious awareness, such as skills or priming effects (e.g., riding a bike).

Procedural Memory

Memory for learned motor skills and procedures, like riding a bike, tying shoelaces, or typing. This type of memory is hard to explain verbally, but we demonstrate it through performance.

Perceptual Skills

Learned ability to process sensory information in a meaningful way, such as recognizing letters, reading, understanding spoken language, or recognizing icons/symbols.

Priming

A bias in information processing where previous exposure to a stimulus makes it easier to process again, even if we don’t consciously remember it.

Encoding-Retrieval Interactions

Retrieval cues are most effective when they match the context or cues present during encoding. This is known as an encoding-retrieval match.

• Environmental Context: For example, remembering better in the same room or location where information was learned.
• Mood-Dependent Memory: For instance, recalling information better when in the same mood (e.g., happy) at both study and test time.
• State-Dependent Memory: Such as remembering better when in the same physiological state (e.g., drug-induced state).
• Language Context: Bilingual individuals often remember better when tested in the same language in which the information was learned.

Key Concepts in Memory Processing

• Encoding: The moment you are learning or saving information into memory.
• Retrieval: The moment you try to access that information from memory.

Control Processes in Encoding

Control processes in encoding are mental strategies we use in working memory to help store information into long-term memory. Not all strategies are equally effective.

• Rehearsal: Repeating information.
• Imagery: Visualizing information.
• Semantic Coding: Linking meaning to information.

Levels of Processing Theory

The Levels of Processing (LOP) Theory proposes that the deeper you think about information when learning it, the better you will remember it.

• Structural Level: Processing based on physical features (e.g., recognizing capital letters) – approximately 17% recognition.
• Phonemic Level: Processing based on sound (e.g., identifying rhymes) – approximately 37% recognition.
• Semantic Level: Processing based on meaning (e.g., understanding the concept) – approximately 60% recognition.

Semantic Organization and Spreading Activation

Semantic Organization

Semantic organization means that long-term memory (LTM) is organized based on the meaning of concepts. Similar or related ideas are stored closer together in the memory system.

Spreading Activation

Spreading activation is the idea that when one concept in memory is activated, that activation spreads to related concepts.

DRM Technique for False Memories

The DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) technique is a method used to induce false memories in a laboratory setting. Participants are given a list of related words (e.g., candy, sugar, sour, honey), but the central word they are all related to (e.g., “sweet”) is not actually shown. Despite this, participants often falsely recall the unpresented central word.

Suggestibility

Suggestibility is the tendency to incorporate misleading external information into your personal memory. For example, you might confuse something you heard or were told with something you actually experienced. This phenomenon was extensively studied by Elizabeth Loftus.

Amnesia

Amnesia refers to profound memory loss caused by brain damage, especially to the hippocampus and medial temporal (MT) lobes.

Types of Amnesia

Both anterograde and retrograde amnesia are forms of memory loss caused by brain damage, particularly in the hippocampus and medial temporal lobes.

• Anterograde Amnesia: A problem creating new memories after the brain damage occurred.
• Retrograde Amnesia: A problem remembering events from the past before the brain damage occurred.

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)

HSAM describes a person who has an extraordinarily detailed and accurate memory for personal life events — specifically episodic memory.

Long-Term Memory as a Constructive Process

Every time we recall a memory, it has to be reconsolidated, meaning the memory becomes temporarily unstable and can be modified or distorted. This process is influenced by suggestibility, emotions, and new information.

Memory Stabilization Processes

• Consolidation: The initial process of stabilizing a memory after learning.
• Reconsolidation: When a memory is recalled, it becomes malleable again and must be restabilized — during this process, changes can occur.