The Three Theoretical Components Of Long Term Memory

"Memory is composed of several different abilities that depend on different brain systems (1). A fundamental distinction is between the capacity for conscious recollection of facts and events (declarative or explicit memory) and various

Outline and evaluate research in to the duration, capacity and encoding information in short term memory.

Explicit memory is memory without conscious recollection-memory of skills and routine. Procedures that are preformed automatically (Santrock 219). Explicit memory helps with things like waking up, getting out of bed and putting on your slippers so your feet don’t feel the cold of the floor. Walking out of your room on the second floor and being able to walk down the hallway and to the left to reach the stairs and making it safely down to the first floor without having to turn the lights on. You know your house “like the palm of your hand” because you

|  Episodic memory is recollection of specific events;  Semantic memory is the recollection of general knowledge and facts.

Memory is defined as “the mental capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information” (American Psychological Association, 2002). It is a part of the means by which humans function. The process of forming and recalling memories involves various complex neurological processes and disruptions to these processes can result in loss of memory or the inability to form new memories. Amnesia is a memory disorder, in which, due to trauma or a head injury, certain parts of the memory is inaccessible. The two main types of amnesia are anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia refers to the inability to create new memories (Mastin, 2010). “Retrograde

The combined findings provide the foundation for the hypothesis that there is more than one kind of memory, or rather that skill-based memories must be organised differently from fact-based memories since the former seem to be preserved in amnesia as opposed to the latter.

Memory is crucial to our lives, it allows us to function presently, moving toward the future. The capability of learning from our accumulated past experiences is the result of memory. Memories can be vivid and long-lasting, or short and unsteady. Memories may not always be ever-lasting, but the impact of them is. They allow us to form relationships throughout our life.

Implicit memories are non-conscious, and usually involve memories for specific step-by-step procedures, or specific emotions. For example, the ability to take out a series procedures in driving a car or a conditioned emotional response to a scary situation. Priming involves neocortex. Procedural memory involves striatum, motor cortex and cerebellum. Amygdala is essential for emotional associations. Conditioned reflexes involve cerebellum.

Some scientists believe that parts of long term memory are permanent while others will eventually weaken over time. (3) Long term memory can be divided into three sections: procedural memory, declarative memory, and remote memory. Procedural memory includes motor skills such as learning how to ride a bike or how to drive a car. "Such memories are slow to acquire but more resistant to change or loss." (4) Declarative memory is used to remember facts, such as names, dates and places. It is easy to learn but also easy to lose. Finally there is episodic memory, which is the record of events that a person stores throughout his or her experience. Recent studies show that these events, as soon as they occur, are sent to a temporary part of the brain called the hippocampus, and that over time they are moved to the neocortex for permanent storage. (5).

Students will recall these kinds of memories because they were semantically encoded, and semantic encoding increases the likelihood of retrieving memories. participants recall these memories without

Episodic Memory: (p. 57) refers to the memory of an event or an episode, allows us to mentally travel back in time to an event in the recent or distant past, includes various details about these events, such as what happened, when it happened, and where it happened.

Long-term memory refers to the continuing storage of information. In Freudian psychology, long-term memory would be call the preconscious and unconscious. This information is largely outside of our awareness, but can be called into working memory to be used. Some of this information is fairly easy to recall, while other memories are much more difficult to access. In long-term memory, Tulving (1972, 2000) has proposed the existence of three kinds of long-term memory storage, which have different properties, and based on different brain mechanisms. The three long-term memory storage are; procedural memory, semantic memory and episodic memory.

The two models or theories I will be looking at for the cognitive process of Memory are the Multi Store Memory Model and the Reconstructive Memory theory. I will be discussing the strengths and limitations of the model and the theory as well as including a few research studies to support my argument.

Another concept to take into account is ‘recall’ and that is the recollection or retrieval of information that has been previously processed (Dumas & Hartman, 2003). An example to explain this concept would be the recalling of a word that a student has learnt for a spelling test.

2It should be known that a single memory is a complex construction. For example, when people think of a simple object the brain retrieves the objects name, its shape, function, and anything else that closely ties itself to that object. 2Each part of this memory is from a different region of the brain. 3(Mohs and Turkington) As stated by April Holladay, “memories of concepts and ideas are related to sense experiences because we extract the essence from sensed experiences to form generalized concepts.” And in the past, many experts explained memory as a ‘filing cabinet’ full of memory folders where