When psychologists studied how people were able to remember things, they realized that it wasn’t simply a matter of holding on to information for a short period of time. In actuality, there appeared to be two types of memory storage: Short term memory (STM), and Long Term Memory (LTM). STMs hold information for a brief moment of time, while LTMs can hold an unlimited amount of information for an extended period of time.
STM deals with information we need to use right now, but any information that needs to be remembered later is stored in LTM (long-term memory). For example, when we call someone on the phone, our STM stores the number so we can dial it later. However, if we’re calling someone again soon, we’ll store the number in LTM because we won’t need it for immediate use. Our minds work similarly. When we think about something, our STM keeps track of it so that we can access it later. But if we remember it again very soon, we move that information into LTM. Psychologists recognize this dual-memory system, but there is some debate as to how exactly these two parts of our brains communicate with each other.
