Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Short-Term Memory, Long-Term Memory, Mnemonic

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Terry Biggs

Document Summary

Memory: processes that allow us to record and later retrieve experience and information. Mind is a processing system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information. Encoding: getting information into the system by translating it into a neural code that your brain processes. Memory has three major components; they are sensory memory, short term (working) memory, and long term memory. Sperling conducted an experiment which involved showing participants a series of letters for a very brief moment; they could only remember 4 to 5 letters: describe the limitations of short-term memory, and how they can be overcome. Since our attention abilities are limited, most information in sensory memory simply fades away; however, through selective attention, some information enter short term memory. Short term memory, however, can only hold a limited amount of information at a time. The limit of short term memory capacity concerns the number of meaningful units that can be recalled.