memory

• Memory


  A process of information flowing through a system
• Cognitive psychologists


  • Explain how information flows in mental systems
• Encoding


  Changing the form of information as it comes in so it can be stored in the brain
• Types of encoding


  • Mental imagery (visual)
  • Acoustic (voice)
  • Semantic (meaning)
• Storage


  Keeping all the information sometimes for your entire life
• Short-term memory


  Holds information you pay attention to, lasts about 18 seconds
• Maintenance rehearsal


  Repeating information in short-term memory
• Elaborative rehearsal


  Giving meaning to information in short-term memory
• Types of long-term memory

  • Episodic (personal experiences)
  • Semantic (facts and meanings)
  • Procedural (skills)
• Episodic and semantic memories use different brain regions, suggesting they are separate processes
• HM lost ability to form new episodic and semantic memories but not procedural memories after surgery
• Memories are often complex combinations of different types of memory
• Multi-store model


  A model that describes how information is processed in the mind, created by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968
• Memory stores in the multi-store model

  • Sensory memory
  • Short-term memory
  • Long-term memory
• Information processing in the multi-store model

  1. Sensory information enters the brain

  2. Attention is paid to some information, which passes to short-term memory

  3. Information in short-term memory is either lost or processed and passed to long-term memory through rehearsal (maintenance or elaborative)
• Sensory memory


  • Information is coded by modality, capacity is very large, duration is very short (around 250 milliseconds)
• Short-term memory


  • Information is coded acoustically, capacity is around 7 items plus or minus 2, duration is very short (around 18 seconds)
• The multi-store model is supported by evidence that the stores are separate, such as the case study of Clyde Wearing
• The multi-store model is criticised for being too simplistic, as long-term memory is not just one store and short-term memory is better explained by the working memory model
• Serial position effect


  The phenomenon where recall of items in a list depends on their position, with better recall for items at the start (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) of the list
• Murdoch's study investigated the serial position effect and provided evidence for both long-term and short-term memory stores
• multi store model of memory

  3 different stores

  A) rehearsal

  B) long term memory

  C) sensory store

  D) attentio

  E) information gets lost

  F) short term memory