"Are you forgetting something today?" Forgetting often occurs due to failures in long-term memory (LTM) retrieval, even when the memory content itself remains intact. Contemporary models of human memory introduce a short-term, or working memory (WM), component that acts as a buffer to LTM. WM performance is known to be influenced by "attention" neuromechanism that selectively filter information necessary for both remembering and later recalling. This raises an intriguing question: is LTM retrieval also modulated by attention, or does it rely on an entirely different neuromechanism? To address this, we devised two behavioral experiments to measure and compare WM and LTM retrieval performance while recalling one or two objects under varying attentional demands. To further identify the neuromechanism behind LTM retrieval, we modeled both WM and LTM with a mixture model to extract two parameters: mnemonic precision (SD) and guessing rate (g), which reflect the utilization of attention and decision-making neuromechanism, respectively. By exploring the inner workings of the LTM retrieval process, our study contributes new theoretical insights to the memory and learning literature; moreover, there are potential applications, particularly in readjusting educational practices and policy-making based on updated findings.

Jonathan Hoyin Chan

Pornchai Mongkolnam