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Let Me Tell Ya About Long Term Memory
Long term memory is big:
- Shepard (1967) had subjects study 580 arbitrary words. On a forced choice test they scored at just under 88%
Long term memory is flexible and robust:
- if asked to name situation comedy programs, most people will have no problem
- a database system might store a set of records such as {(Giligan's Island, situation comedy), (Full House, situation comedy), (World News, current affairs), etc.}
- at test the database could cycle through these one at a time retrieving those that have the situation comedy tag
- however, such a system would require that when you are watching television shows you are constantly tagging them as situation comedy, current affairs etc.
- if you had tagged the program as "the funny show with the skinny sailor in it" the search for situation comedy would come back with NO RECORDS FOUND.
- human memory is much more flexible and robust
