What is Memory? -How Does it Work?

1. The ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased. It refers to items detected by the sensory receptors which are retained temporarily in the sensory registers and which have a large capacity for unprocessed information but are only able to hold accurate images of sensory information momentarily.
2. For example, every time I smell Old Spice it reminds me of big bear hugs from my grandfather.
3. Exactly how long information can be stored in sensory memory differs according to source of the sensory information being remembered:

• iconic memory (visual sensory memory) - less than one second
• echoic memory (auditory sensory memory) - less than four seconds

4. Short term memory is the capacity to hold a small amount of information in mind. The duration of short term memory is believed to be in order of seconds.

5. "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology.  It was published in 1956 by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller.

6. Chunking is taking 'chunks' of information and grouping them all together.

7. The capacity of short-term memory is more or less constant (from five to nine chunks of meaningful information)

8.Short-term memory is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing.

9. The issue with duration in long-term memory relates to recall and forgetting. It is impossible to measure and may be limitless. The brains ability to store information is greater than the worlds most powerful computer memory.

10. Memory starts as stimuli and if we don't think a lot about something, then it becomes a short term memory but if we give it a lot of thought, then it becomes a long term memory.

11.  1. The sensory stores are sensory systems, not memory systems as most people think of the term "memory."

      2. The three-box model suggests that there is nothing in between short-term and long-term memory. However, evidence shows that information can reside somewhere between the extremes of active attention and long-term storage. Memories can be "warmed up" but outside of attention. In other words, intermediate levels of activation are possible.

     3. The three-box model implies that there is just one short-term system and just one long-term system. In reality, there are many memory systems operating in parallel (for example, different systems for vision, language, and odor memory). Each has short-term and long-term operations.

12. -Organization -Distinctiveness -Effort -Elaboration 

13. The process of repeatedly thinking or talking about the information. 

- For example when I am trying to remember my vocabulary words I just think and say many times the word so that it stays in my mind.

14. In contrast to maintenance rehearsal, which involves simple rote repetition, elaborative rehearsal involves deep sematic processing of a to-be-remembered item resulting in the production of durable memories.

- For example Mr Dougherty told us that he remembers his parents phone number by elaborative rehearsal because he remembers it within pieces of information like for example 987-678-068

15.  Craik and Lockhart (1972