CHAPTER 6 LONG-TERM MEMORY

Chapter 6: Long-Term Memory

Long-Term Memory Overview

• Long-term memory (LTM) serves as an "archive" for information about past events and knowledge learned.

• Functions closely with working memory (WM).

• Memory storage ranges from a few seconds to one's earliest memories; more recent memories typically provide greater detail.

Questions to Consider

• Impact of brain damage on the ability to access past memories or form new ones.

• Differentiation between personal experiential memories (episodic) and factual knowledge (semantic).

• Interaction of various memory types in daily experiences.

• Representation of memory loss in popular films.

Serial Position Effect

• Introduced by Murdoch (1962), demonstrates the distinction between short-term and long-term memories.

• Primacy Effect: Better recall of words presented at the beginning of a list due to more rehearsal time.

• Recency Effect: Better recall of words at the list's end, as these items remain in short-term memory (STM).

Examples from Experiments

• Rundus (1971): Found the rehearsal curve closely followed the serial position curve, demonstrating the importance of rehearsal in memory formation.

• Glanzer and Cunitz (1966): Showed the recency effect disappears with a delay before memory testing.

Coding in Memory

• Encoding processes differ in short-term and long-term memory:

  • Visual and Auditory Encoding: Representations of visual patterns and sounds.

  • Semantic Encoding: Recognition of meanings, susceptible to proactive interference as detailed in Wickens et al. (1976).

Brain Location of Memory

• Neuropsychological Evidence:

  • Patient HM: Retained STM but unable to create new LTM due to hippocampus removal.

  • Patient KF: Sustained STM damage yet maintained functional LTM and could form new memories.

Double Dissociation Studies

• Demonstrates distinct impairments between short-term and long-term memories amongst patients:

  • H.M. and Clive Wearing: Impaired LTM but functional STM.

  • K.F.: Impaired STM but intact LTM.

Types of Long-Term Memory

• Episodic Memory: Personal experience memories, facilitating mental time travel, e.g., recalling a vacation.

• Semantic Memory: Knowledge of facts, e.g., knowing the capital city of a state.

• Autobiographical Memory: Combination of episodic (specific experiences) and semantic (related facts) memories related to one's life.

Effects of Time on Memory

• Forgetting increases over time, with familiarity (semantic) and recollection (episodic) being distinct processes.

• Remember/Know procedure illustrates how older memories often lose episodic details, becoming more semantic in nature.

Future Simulation and Memory

• Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis: Ability to anticipate future events by reconstructing past episodic memories, aiding future planning and decisions, akin to mind wandering.

Implicit Memory

• Definition: Learning without conscious memory awareness, including:

  • Procedural Memory: Skills and actions learned without explicit recollection of learning.

  • Priming: Past exposure influences response to a test stimulus.

  • Conditioning: Associating stimuli with response, often without remembering the original pairings.

Priming Effects in Research

• Graf et al. (1985): Weapons of memory tests showing amnesiac patients have intact implicit memory, excelling at tasks requiring word stem completions despite poor recall.

• Warrington and Weiskrantz (1968): Investigated fragmented picture recognition, asserting that implicit memory functions independently of conscious recollection.

Applications in Everyday Life

• Perfect and Askew (1994): Demonstrated propaganda effects demonstrating why individuals rate familiar assertions as true, showcasing implicit memory's role in marketing and communication.