PS102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Fergus I. M. Craik, The Cocktail Party, Sensory Memory
Document Summary
There are 3 processes involved with memory: encoding - involves forming a memory code, storage - involves maintaining encoded information in memory over time, retrieval - involves recovering information from memory stores, encoding: getting information into memory. You generally need to pay attention to information in order to remember it. Attention involves focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events. Selective attention is critical to every day functioning. When ltering occurs, it"s clear people have dif culty focusing their attention on more than 2 or more inputs simultaneously. Studies by fergus craik indicate that when participants are forced to divide their attention between memory encoding and another task, large reductions in memory performance are seen. Divided attention can also affect the performance of tasks negatively as well, especially if they are complex or unfamiliar. Most people think they"re multitasking, but they"re actually just switching their attention between tasks back and forth rather than processing them simultaneously.
