Sunday, November 6, 2011

How Memory Works: In a nutshell.

There are three memory systems: Sensory memory, Short-term, or working, memory and Long-term memory. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste or smell goes into your sensory memory, if you choose to pay attention to anything that is going on, the information that you're paying attention to moves from sensory memory to short term memory, and anything that you're not paying attention to is lost forever because short-term memory only deals with current information. This process only takes seconds, as does the next. Once a memory is in your short-term memory, a few things can happen to a memory. Maintenance rehearsal keeps it in short-term memory longer, Encoding moves it to long-term memory, and if neither of those happen within the first few seconds, the memory can be lost forever. If the memory does get encoded into long-term memory, you'll likely remember most of it forever, and if not you'll remember it for a very long time. The memory can be brought back to short term memory by retrieval if you're thinking or talking about it.

There are a few types of long-term memory, which include semantic memory, episodic memory, declarative memory and procedural memory. Each type is unique. Semantic memory is knowledge of language: rules words and meanings, episodic is memory of ones own life and knowing what time things happened at, declarative is memory of knowledge that can be called forth
consciously as needed, and lastly procedural memory is memory of learned skills that does not require conscousl recollection. As you can see, all four types of long-term memory are both unique and important.


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