EXAM NOTES

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Memory Exam Question...

Moving on, what should you be doing in terms of the modules now? Look over the bit in last week's News where I began to preview our study of long-term memory (LTM). As I said there, long-term memory is sometimes now called "permanent" memory but I don't like that name because it suggests that memories are like videotapes or DVDs, stored in their original form and containing all the original details (and nothing else). But in fact, if you follow a schema model for example, what's stored is probably quite different from the original stimulus. And, while maybe something like a memory record *is* kept permanently, it certainly can't always be retrieved when wanted (e.g., due to neurological conditions like amnesia but also just everyday phenomena like the Tip-of-the-Tongue effect).

More generally, as I have noted in earlier WYSBs, the overall concept of memory has changed over the last 40 or 50 years. The model that was originally so influential was the Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) one that shows STM and LTM as separate clearly defined boxes. This model is now thought of as a "convenient fiction", because it can be a very helpful way to begin to learn about memory. (Not sure who called it a "convenient fiction", but I like the phrase.)

But it is certainly wrong in some ways. (Can you tell me about one? That would be a good question for the Exam!) Instead, the overall conceptualization of memory is now much more like the "levels of processing" model described in Matlin and Farmer’s Chapter 5. Let me say a bit more.