How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention

by Daniel L. Everett

Long-term memory is divided into declarative memory and procedural memory. Procedural memory is implicit memory of processes involving motor skills. When trying to remember a password, your declarative memory might fail you, in the sense that you cannot recall the names of all the symbols you have chosen for your password. But your procedural memory can come to the rescue if you will simply set yourself down at the keyboard and type the password. In a sense, your fingers ‘remember’ a code that your conscious memory has forgotten. Or someone might be trying to teach another person how to play a riff on the guitar and forget the notes. They can still teach the riff, however, by slowly playing it for the learner. But be careful not to play too slowly. Procedural memory seems to prefer to keep things at tempo.