Long Term Memory

Long Term Memory

1. Capacity

   • Not possible to quantify the exact capacity of LTM
     • Most psychologists believe there is no upper limit
   • Highly organized structure
     • Different memory systems

2. Duration

   • Considerably longer then STM - Can last a whole lifetime
     • Bahrick and colleagues (1975) 'permastore'
   • Bahrick et al. (1975)
     • People can remember certain types of information for almost a lifetime
     • Very long - term memory appears to be better when measured by recognition tests than recall tests
   • Childhood amnesia affects the duration of LTM
   • How duration is measured affects the duration of LTM
   • Thorough learning affects the duration of LTM

3. Encoding

   • The type of stimulus material can affect the way we encode in LTM
   • Acoustic encoding affects encoding in long term memory
   • Visual encoding affects encoding in LTM
     • Can easily bring to mind pictorial images of people
       • Suggests some visual encoding in LTM