Psychology 2040A/B Lecture Notes - Memory Span, Autobiographical Memory, Long-Term Memory

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2040A/B
• Professor: Michael G Mac Donald

Document Summary

Brain at 75% growth at 2 yo while height. Human mind similar to computer limited capacity. Software: mental programs specifying how info is registered, interpreted, stored, retrieved, analyzed. Model of the flow of information in thinking information flows through 3 main stores. Sensory store: stimuli are noticed and briefly available for further processing, echo of raw sensory input. Short-term store: stimuli retained for several seconds and operated upon long-term store: info examined and interpreted, stored permanently for future use. Executive control: processes involved in regulating attention and in determining what to do with info just gathered or retrieved from long-term memory largely voluntary. Higher level cognition emerges as a result of self- organization: lower level units (sensations, features) interact and organize into higher order units (perception. concept) Knowledge base: one"s existing information about a topic or content area. Memory span: measure of the amount of info that can be held in sts.