- Define and explain Types of Long-Term Memory in your own words
- Use key terms such as rehearsal accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Types of Long-Term Memory: compare semantic, episodic and procedural memory, and see how each one is stored and used.
Compare semantic, episodic and procedural memory, and see how each one is stored and used.
Key ideas
Long-term memory has different types
Tulving distinguished episodic memory — memories of personal events, like your last birthday — from semantic memory — knowledge of facts and meanings, like knowing Paris is the capital of France. A third type, procedural memory, holds skills like riding a bike, which you remember how to do even when you cannot explain it. These types can be damaged separately: people with amnesia may lose episodic memories while their procedural skills stay intact, showing the stores are genuinely distinct.
Memory moves through stores
Atkinson and Shiffrin's 1968 multi-store model describes information flowing through three stores: the sensory register, which holds fleeting sights and sounds for fractions of a second; short-term memory, which holds about seven items for under half a minute unless rehearsed; and long-term memory, which can store vast amounts for a lifetime. Information only reaches long-term memory if it is attended to and rehearsed — which is why zoning out in class means the lesson never gets stored.
Key term — rehearsal: Repeating or thinking about material to keep it in short-term memory or move it into long-term memory.
Give one example each of episodic, semantic and procedural memory.
Episodic: remembering your last birthday. Semantic: knowing that water boils at 100°C. Procedural: knowing how to ride a bicycle.
Answer: Episodic: remembering your last birthday. Semantic: knowing that water boils at 100°C. Procedural: knowing how to ride a bicycle.
- Re-reading notes is the best revision Re-reading feels productive but builds little lasting memory. The evidence favours retrieval practice — testing yourself — and spacing sessions over days, which flatten Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve.
- Short-term memory can hold unlimited information Short-term memory is strictly limited: about seven items, lasting under half a minute without rehearsal. Chunking groups items so that more fits within the limit.
Practice
Sensory register → short-term memory → long-term memory.
It enters the sensory register and briefly short-term memory, but without attention and rehearsal it decays within seconds and is never encoded into long-term memory.
About 7±2 items (Miller, 1956), lasting around 18–30 seconds without rehearsal.
Chunking: grouping items so each chunk counts as one unit, fitting short-term memory's limited capacity of about 7±2 items.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "rehearsal"?
What did Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve show, and what does it imply for revision?
- Types of Long-Term Memory: compare semantic, episodic and procedural memory, and see how each one is stored and used.
- Long-term memory has different types: Tulving distinguished episodic memory — memories of personal events, like your last birthday — from semantic memory — knowledge of facts and meanings, like knowing Paris is the capital of France.
- encoding: Getting information into memory in the first place, for example by paying attention to a teacher's explanation.
- Watch out for: re-reading notes is the best revision