Cognitive Psychology – Long-term Memory
Is long-term memory one thing? NO
Different kinds of long-term memories:
o Skills like how to ride a bike, play the piano
o Habits like putting the tea-bag in the cup before the water
o Images like the memory of your grandmother’s face
o The meaning of the word “googled”
o Producing the first word that comes to mind when you hear “green”
o Repeated actions: getting something for lunch today, just like you did
yesterday
The structure of long-term memory
Two main categories of long-term memory
Implicit/non-declarative memory
o Ability to recall a movement sequence or how to perform some act or
behaviour
o Unconscious memory: subjects can demonstrate knowledge, such as skill,
conditioned response, or recalling events on prompting, but cannot explicitly
retrieve the information
Explicit/declarative memory
o Ability to recall what one knows, to detail the time, place, and circumstances
of events
o Conscious memory: subjects can retrieve an item and indicate that they know
that the retrieved item is the correct item
There is little difference between the implicit-explicit distinction and the non-
declarative-declarative distinction
Terms used most frequently in most recent years: declarative vs. non-declarative
, A taxonomy of long-term memory
Procedural memory vs. priming
Procedural memory:
o Skills, how to perform certain actions, like riding a bike
o Procedural learning occurs slowly, and gradually. Often assessed in the lab
through serial reaction time task (learning of a complex pattern over a
sequence of trials)
o The learn a pattern slowly over time
Priming:
o Processing a stimulus is influenced by a prior encounter with the same or a
related stimulus. Usually occurs rapidly.
E.g. cat (prime) followed by a picture of a cat (target)
o The repeated presentation of a stimulus means it can be processed more
efficiently, using fewer resources
o Priming effect in the brain is called a repetition suppression effect. E.g. in the
case of reading words, the brain areas responsible for reading for words need
fewer resources the second time the word is presented, so there is a
repetition suppression effect in these brain areas.
o One exposure is enough to make it easier for the second time it occurred.
This does not mean that the second time around is exactly the same, but they
can be semantically similar, for example.
What makes explicit and implicit memory different?
Encoding memories
o Implicit information is processed in a “bottom-up” or data-driven manner
Information is encoded in the same way it was perceived
You are very passive and are only encoding memory in the way that it
is perceived
o Explicit information is processed in a “top-down” or conceptually-driven
manner
The subject is able to reorganise the information
More actively involved in encoding the information – rearrange the
information that is taken in
o In implicit tasks, the person has a passive role; whereas in explicit tasks, the
person has an active role
Is long-term memory one thing? NO
Different kinds of long-term memories:
o Skills like how to ride a bike, play the piano
o Habits like putting the tea-bag in the cup before the water
o Images like the memory of your grandmother’s face
o The meaning of the word “googled”
o Producing the first word that comes to mind when you hear “green”
o Repeated actions: getting something for lunch today, just like you did
yesterday
The structure of long-term memory
Two main categories of long-term memory
Implicit/non-declarative memory
o Ability to recall a movement sequence or how to perform some act or
behaviour
o Unconscious memory: subjects can demonstrate knowledge, such as skill,
conditioned response, or recalling events on prompting, but cannot explicitly
retrieve the information
Explicit/declarative memory
o Ability to recall what one knows, to detail the time, place, and circumstances
of events
o Conscious memory: subjects can retrieve an item and indicate that they know
that the retrieved item is the correct item
There is little difference between the implicit-explicit distinction and the non-
declarative-declarative distinction
Terms used most frequently in most recent years: declarative vs. non-declarative
, A taxonomy of long-term memory
Procedural memory vs. priming
Procedural memory:
o Skills, how to perform certain actions, like riding a bike
o Procedural learning occurs slowly, and gradually. Often assessed in the lab
through serial reaction time task (learning of a complex pattern over a
sequence of trials)
o The learn a pattern slowly over time
Priming:
o Processing a stimulus is influenced by a prior encounter with the same or a
related stimulus. Usually occurs rapidly.
E.g. cat (prime) followed by a picture of a cat (target)
o The repeated presentation of a stimulus means it can be processed more
efficiently, using fewer resources
o Priming effect in the brain is called a repetition suppression effect. E.g. in the
case of reading words, the brain areas responsible for reading for words need
fewer resources the second time the word is presented, so there is a
repetition suppression effect in these brain areas.
o One exposure is enough to make it easier for the second time it occurred.
This does not mean that the second time around is exactly the same, but they
can be semantically similar, for example.
What makes explicit and implicit memory different?
Encoding memories
o Implicit information is processed in a “bottom-up” or data-driven manner
Information is encoded in the same way it was perceived
You are very passive and are only encoding memory in the way that it
is perceived
o Explicit information is processed in a “top-down” or conceptually-driven
manner
The subject is able to reorganise the information
More actively involved in encoding the information – rearrange the
information that is taken in
o In implicit tasks, the person has a passive role; whereas in explicit tasks, the
person has an active role
