Short Term Memory

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Created by
Ben Harper

Cards (2)

  • Short Term Memory
    STM temporarily stores information that is received from the Sensory Store. It is an active memory system because it contains information that we are currently thinking about. STM differs massively from LTM especially in terms of coding, capacity and duration.
  • Coding in the Short Term Memory
    Information arrives from the Sensory Store in its original raw form e.g. sound and vision. Then it is then encoded (entered into STM) in a form that STM can more easily deal with.
    E.g. if the input into SR was the word "platypus", this could be coded into the STM in several ways.
    • Visually - by thinking of the image of a platypus
    • Acoustically - by repeatedly saying "platypus"
    • Semantically - by using knowledge of platypuses, such as them being venomous, egg-laying aquatic marsupials.