This week we are covering Chapter 6: Memory. We’ll cover most of the chapter.

Memory processes and stages

Memory can be broken down into 3 basic processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. How do we encode the information from our senses? How do we store the information? And how do we retrieve/recall that information? If we want to know why we “forget” things, we have to understand how these processes work – and how they don’t work.

The idea that there are different  levels of processing (Links to an external site.) let’s us know that not everything is encoded, and so stored and retrieved, the same. The deeper you encode something, the better you will be at remembering it. This is especially helpful when studying – try some of the deep processing techniques (Links to an external site.) like elaborative rehearsal the next time you study for a test and see how much better you do!

There are several models that are useful to consider when studying how memory works. One of the most influential models is the  information-processing model (Links to an external site.) (also see video link below). This model likens memory to a computer program which has certain stages and certain processes that move the information back and forth across the stages:

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· Sensory memory – holds sensory information for a short period of time

· Attention is required to move information from the sensory memory to short-term memory. Imagine looking at a painting for a 10 seconds, then you are asked to describe what was happening in the upper left-hand quadrant of the painting. Unless you were paying attention to that part of the painting, you might not remember what was there. You probably even looked at it, but you didn’t encode it into your short-term memory because you didn’t pay attention to it.

· Short-term memory (STM) – temporary storage of information (about 30 seconds)

· Maintenance rehearsal is required to move info from your short-term to long-term memory. Imagine I told you my phone number. Unless you repeated it over and over, you will soon forget the number.

· Maintenance rehearsal only works if you are not distracted – if you are also asked to look at a painting and recall it later, you won’t be able to do both and you will forget some parts of the number or painting. This is because your STM is what we call capacity-limited – you can only remember so much at a time.

· George Miller  (Links to an external site.) discovered we can only recall 5-9 bits of information, something he called the “ magical number 7 plus or minus 2 (Links to an external site.) ”.

· Chunking  (Links to an external site.) is one strategy we use to overcome the limits of STM. (Can we talk about how awesome it is that there is a scientific term called “chunking”?) When you chunk, you group bits of information together so instead of remembering each thing separately, you remember the chunk. Think back to my phone number. My office number is 9542628469. That’s a lot to remember – 9 numbers! But we don’t remember numbers that way, right? We remember the area code (954), then the exchange (it’s an NSU number so it’s 262), then my individual numbers (8469). So really, you only need to remember 6 chunks (or bits) of information (954, 262, 8, 4, 6, and 9), which

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