In cognitive Psychology, the long-term memory ( MLT ) is the memory with the current direction. The concept of MLT takes all its direction within the framework of the model of the memory which distinguish several subsystems according to the type of information memorized and the duration of retention. The long-term memory is thus opposed to the sensory Registre and the short-term Mémoire.

Storage in the long-term memory

The MLT thus appears when contained information in the working memory is stored there via a process of repetition. There exist two principal processes to store information in this memory: the car-repetition of maintenance (or maintenance) and the car-repetition of integration (or elaborative). The first consists in repeating information mentally to be learned. The second consists in using the semantic encoding by associating new information with another already known.

Types of long-term memory

There exist three types of long-term memory which are characterized by their contents.

Episodical memory

This type of memory includes/understands the memories of the lived events. It is the memory of the personal experience. However, it is paradoxical. One with the impression of better remembering the experiments that knowledge, but it is the opposite. In fact, the events are not revived, but are not rebuilt. Thus the emotions which the memories revive can modify our memory of the past.

semantic Memory

This type of memory relates to the encyclopedic facts and knowledge. It functions by objective concepts, which makes it more reliable and solid that the episodical memory.

Procedural memory

This type of memory relates to the driving skills, know-how, the usual gestures. It is thanks to it that one can remember how to carry out a sequence of gestures. It is highly reliable and preserves its memories even if they are not used during several years. The procedural memory is activated in the actions which we carry out “in free wheel”: to light a cigarette for the smokers, to prepare a boiled egg, to start its car, etc

If the procedural memory is implicit, it however has the advantage of being able to be clarified when the subject is questioned. This is why, the question “How do you make when you want to smoke a cigarette? ” an answer brings which can be translated in a detailed decisional tree. With each “node”, a change of procedure can be carried out (example: lighting can be made with a lighter, a match or the preceding cigarette), which is useful to stop one day smoking.

Capacity

The capacity of the MLT is theoretically infinite (considering that the researchers still did not test the limits of them). Beside the number of things that it sometimes happens to us to forget, that can appear very strange: why do we forget, that is to say what prevents us the access information, if it is there?

The lapse of memory of information stored in the MLT comes from an incapacity to reach the information and not the absence of information in the storage system. This problem of access is due to two types of interferences with other information:

Retroactive interference

To remember old information is more difficult, because of the superabundance of recent information.

Proactive interference

To remember recent information is more difficult, because of the superabundance of old information. Old information infère on new information and inhibits it.

See too

• long-term Working memory

• short-term Memory
• sensory Register
• Encoding

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