Page 204 - Keys To Community College Success

KEY 7.2 Long-term memory has three separate storage houses.

Long-Term Memory

Storage of Storage of Storage of
Procedural Memory Declarative Memory Episodic Memory
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CHAPTER Storage for information about Memories of facts, concepts, formulas, Memories of events linked to

and so on. These are relatively easy to
procedures, in other words, how to
personal experiences.
learn, but are easy to forget without
l
a
do things—ride a bike, drive a car,
e
tie your shoes. It can take a while
c
n
o
to develop these memories, but continual review.
they are difficult to lose.

Why You Forget
Issues with health, nutrition, and stress can cause memory problems. Research shows
that even short-term stress can interfere with cell communication in the learning and
memory regions of the brain. However, the most common reason that information
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fails to stay in long-term memory is ineffective studying—not risking the effort neces-
sary to earn the reward of retention.
Retaining information requires continual review. If you review the material over
time—after 24 hours, a week, a month, six months, and more—your reward is knowledge
retention. If you do not review, the neural connections will weaken, and eventually you
will forget. In a classic study conducted in 1885, researcher Herman Ebbinghaus memo-
rized a list of meaningless three-letter words such as CEF and LAZ. He then examined
how quickly he forgot them. Within one hour he had forgotten more than 50% of what
he had learned; after two days, he knew less than 30% of the memorized words. His
experiment shows how fragile memory can be without regular review. 4
In his studies of how the brain remembers, neuroscientist Karim Nader has made
groundbreaking discoveries about the effort necessary to retain accurate memories.
Once a memory is solidified in the brain, Nader has shown that it is to some extent
rebuilt each time it is remembered, and can be altered by environment or circumstances
when it is rebuilt. For example, most people have had an experience where they realize
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that they’ve recalled an event from the past inaccurately because they’ve been influ-
enced by how someone else told the story or by their desire to forget some aspect of it.
For your purposes as a college student, this emphasizes the importance of both
regular repetition and studying in as consistent an environment as you can manage.
Because Cindy is in her car every day, for example, she could benefit from recording
important information and listening to it on her commute.

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