Psychology - Processes of 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)
• 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 memory types