What's the Difference Between Learning and Memory?
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #87
What exactly is the difference between learning and memory?
It’s a question we often take for granted. Educators are always talking about learning – but are we completely clear on what it actually is? And is it okay for people to use the word ‘memory’ interchangeably with learning?
There’s great potential for confusion, and today I want to share with you a cognitive science view of the links and differences. We’ll see that memory is:
Often misunderstood
A multi-part system
Necessary, but not sufficient for learning
Defining memory
I frequently see books for teachers saying things like ‘some learning is stored in memory’. Let’s look at how psychologists define memory. Memory is the ability to retain information or a representation of past experience across time. Therefore, anything we retain is in memory – by definition. Not just some of it.
Whether learners are taking in simple facts, life experiences, skills, whatever – if they retain it over even a few minutes, then it’s in long-term memory. This, of course, means that memory is not just about low-level facts, as is sometimes assumed. Memory is involved, must be involved, in all learning.
A complex system
So, does that mean learning and memory are the same? Not exactly. For one thing, memory is a complex system, with various parts which operate in different situations:
“Memory is neither a single entity nor a phenomenon that occurs in a single area of the brain” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 124).
Regular readers will know that memory consists of working memory and long-term memory (see update #68), two key systems that do different things. Each of these can also be subdivided. For example, working memory has both a visual and a verbal store.
This starts to illustrate that memory is a complex system that supports learning, rather than being the same thing as learning. Often, only some types of memory will be relevant to a study task (Squire et al., 1993 – link below – explains the many sub-systems).
Necessary, but…
Is memory really necessary for all learning? Some people might argue that we could learn things without taking in any new information into memory at all. For example, perhaps I simply sit on a train, looking out the window, and reflect on something that I read earlier in the day. Is this learning without memory?
I would agree that this example could constitute learning. However, it’s flawed to suppose that it doesn’t involve memory. It doesn’t involve input. It does, however, involve using and reorganising things in memory. It involves modifying associations – all of which is (or at least might be) retained over time.
This means that memory is involved in creative insights, transformational or experiential learning, and so forth, as well as in taking in new facts and skills.
…not sufficient
However while memory is always involved in learning, the reverse is not always true. We can use our memories without learning anything!
For something to be learned, it implies more than just retaining it in memory. It implies that the retention is relatively lasting (or even permanent), and that the learner can do something with that new learning – that is, it will transfer to a future situation (Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015). Consider that:
Something could be held in working memory for a few seconds. Even something in long-term memory might be quite rapidly forgotten after minutes or hours. So, just being in memory isn’t enough to count as learning.
Learning involves a certain degree of being able to do something with the new memory. At the very least, the learner should be able to retrieve it in relevant situations. Again, we could hardly call it ‘learning’ if that didn’t happen.
Overall, all of this implies that memory is the basis for learning, but has a broader definition. You could look at it as the system that underpins learning. Another way to view it is that memory is necessary but not sufficient for learning.
If you’d like a deeper dive into all the various systems of memory and how they have been investigated, I recommend the following. It doesn’t directly contrast memory and learning, but I think its perspective fits with the view of memory as a set of systems that permit learning to happen:
Squire, L. R., Knowlton, B., & Musen, G. (1993). The structure and organization of memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 44(1), 453–495.
To sum up, all learning (at least in education-relevant contexts) must involve using working memory and storing things in long term memory. But we set a higher bar to count something as learning. We would require it to be retained over time, and be usable knowledge.
Next time, I’ll dive into situations where memory supports temporary performance but not learning – and what this means for educators.
Jonathan
Please note that my slides and similar materials are used under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.