Short- and Long-Term Memory – The Odd Couple
So we’ve gone through the different types of memory. Clearly you can see how they are very different to each other.
Neuroscience shows that they occur in different parts of the brain.
Short-term memory is active and can be disrupted like when someone talks to you while you are trying to copy a phone number. Long-term memory, however, is not as easily disrupted.
Short-term memory has a limited capacity (usually about 5-7 ‘chunks). Long-term memory is virtually unlimited!
Retrieving short-term memory is an automatic process while there can be problems retrieving long-term memory. Ever noticed how you can try to remember something from your long-term memory such someone’s name or an exam answer but you can’t quite seem to remember it. Annoying when it is someone’s name, highly stressful in an exam. However, a lot of the time, eventually you remember it. Even if no one prompts you or you don’t get told the answer. This shows issues with retrieval of long-term memory. The memory is clearly there but you have trouble getting at it.
Some conditions affect short-term memory but not long-term and vice versa.
However, whilst they are very different, short-term memory and long-term memory interact and work together.
On analogy is that off a in-tray and a file cabinet. Think of short-term memory as the in-tray while long-term memory is the file cabinet.
The in-tray (short-term memory) has a limited capacity before in needs to be empty. (of course, if you are like me, your in-tray probably is always full but you seem to always be able to put more in it!). But for the sake of the analogy, this isn’t the case.
In an ideal world (an organised world of which I a not a part of!), things must be sorted from the in-tray. Some information is thrown out (junk mail etc), other information is sorted into the file cabinets (long-term memory).
Thus short-term memory acts as the bottleneck and gateway to long-term memory.
Information enters it and must be coded to transfer into long-term memory. This takes time. Like sorting your in-tray.
Getting information from short-term memory is relatively easy. Like finding something in your in-tray (again, your in-tray, not mine!)
However, finding something in the file-cabinet takes more effort and is reliant on the information being stored in the right place.
Next week we will look at our we remember.
Conclusion
The short-term and long-term memory systems are very different but work together. The short-term memory has limited capacity, is easy to get information from and acts as a gateway to our long-term memory. Meanwhile our long-term memory is thought to have unlimited capacity but takes longer to get information from.
Photo by whitehoune/iStock / Getty Images