Retrieval: Access information in LTM for daily processes.

• Mental Time-travel: Planning for tomorrow depends on previous memories.

Differences between STM and LTM

• STM stores physical details of sensory stimulus while LTM stores semantic info like meaning.

  (E.g. STM can recall a sentence word-for-word in 15s, but LTM can store its meaning)

• Rely on different brain mechanisms (Supported by studies on H.M)

• STM capabilities can diagnose Alzheimer's.

• LTM in hippocampus, STM in other cortical regions (dissociated).

Amnesia: Severely impaired LTM capacities due to trauma or brain damage.

• Retrograde Amnesia: Difficulty recalling old info encoded before amnesia. (Likely brain injury)
• Anterograde Amnesia: Difficulty encoding new info after amnesia. (Damage to hippocampus)
  • Case study: H.M has hippocampus removed due to seizure, loses LTM capacity.
• Hippocampus is the critical structure for encoding explicit info into LTM.
• Double-Dissociation: Function can be shown to be preserved while the other is compromised, used in proving localization.

Long-Term Memory

• Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating info without additional thought.
• Elaborative Rehearsal: Consider the meaning of info. (More effective)

Serial Position Effect: Repetition lead to long-term memory encoding.

• Given a list of words to remember, the performance forms a U-shape.

• Primacy Effect: Better perf. to words seen earlier.

  Words in the beginning have a better chance to be rehearsed (LTM).

• Recency Effect: Better perf. to words seen later.

  Cause: Words are still in STM when participants are asked.

Levels of Processing Theory: Deeper meaning processing → remember better.