Remembering Over the Short and Long Term

Abstract

This chapter reviews evidence from behavioural and cognitive neuroscience research that supports a unitary view of memory whereby working memory and long-term memory phenomena arise from representations and processes that are largely shared when remembering over the short or long term. Using ‘false working memories’ as a case study, it highlights several paradoxes that cannot be explained by a multisystem view of memory in which working memory and long-term memory are structurally distinct. Instead, it is posited that behavioural memory effects over the short and long term relating to semantic processing, modality/domain-specificity, dual-task interference, strategic processing, and so on arise from the differences in activational states and availability of different representational features (e.g. sensory/perceptual, associative, action-based) that vary in their time courses and activity, attentional priority, and susceptibility to interference. Cognitive neuroscience evidence primarily from brain imaging methodologies that support this view is reviewed.