Exploring Human Memory
The human memory is a very important skill that all humans have and
need. Without the memory we wouldn't be able to remember things that
we have done or able to hold specific information. Philosophers have
been interested in memory for over 2,000 years, but it is only in the
last 50 years that psychologists have made a systematic study of the
topic. Memory is studied within the branch of Psychology known as
cognitive psychology, where you can find the subjects known as
Thinking, perception, attention and memory. This is a research field
which focuses on the mental process humans use to acquire, store,
retrieve and use their knowledge about the world. The studies of
memory first came about when Ebbinghaus (1885) used nonsense syllables
and discovered two systems/stores. There was also wm James (1890) who
developed primary and secondary memory.
There are several theories of memory are based on the assumption that
there are two types of memory
v Episodic memory (events)
v Semantic memory (skills)
Psychologists are able to draw a distinction between the two different
types. Episodic memory is our memory for particular events and how
where and when things happened. Whereas semantic memory is more
concerned with skills and how we do things. We are then able to
distinguish our every day skills and also are good and bad memories.
There are also three stages of the memory.
v Encoding
v Storage
v Retrieval
When we are memorizing information there are three stages it goes
through for us to remember. To get a mental representation we first we
need to code the information then store it for a while then we can
retrieve it.
There are many different ways of remembering; when the information is
retrieved directly from memory at will this will be called recall.
When the information is identified as familiar when we see it or hear
it again this is called recognition. There is also reconstruction
where the information is re-organised, and re-learning savings this is
= Memory is the process of storing information and experiences for possible retrieval at some point in the future. This ability to create and retrieve memories is fundamental to all aspects of cognition and in a broader sense it is essential to our ability to function properly as human beings. Our memories allow us to store information about the world so that we can understand and deal with future situations on the basis of past experience. The process of thinking and problem solving relies heavily on the use of previous experience and memory also makes it possible for us to acquire language and to communicate with others. Memory also plays a basic part in the process of perception, since we can only make sense of our perceptual input by referring to our store of previous experiences.
Definition of memory and it's functions is difficult to illustrate by a single sentence. Consequently we use several metaphors to describe memory implicitly. Our beliefs, perceptions and imagination influence memory. The fact gave rise to memory being described as a reconstructive process, explaining that memory is not an exact record of a particular experience. Instead we bring various components together and fill in the blanks with our predisposed schemas while recalling.
Memory is an important and active system that receives information. Memory is made up of three different stages sensory memory, short term memory, and long term memory. According to the power point presentation, sensory memory refers to short storage of memory that allows an individual to process information as it occurs. Short term memory refers to memory that is only available for a limited time. It is information that is held for seconds or sometimes even minutes. Long term memory refers to memory that is stored for a long period of time and it has an unlimited capacity with the ability to hold as much information as possible. Retrieval is key and it allows individuals to have memories. Episodic memory refers to memory for events that we
Have you ever wondered what allows us to be aware of the present? It is actually the past! Without knowledge of past information, we would be constantly confused during the present and incapable of almost everything. Hockenbury & Hockenbury (2012) describes memory to be, “…the mental processes that enable us to acquire, retain, and retrieve information”. Without the presence of either of these three processes, the other two would be obsolete. Many experiments have been conducted to better understand these processes and break them down into their basic components.
Memory is a group of related mental processes that are involved in acquiring, storing, and retrieving information (Hockenberry and Hocenberry page 232). I will be addressing two specific types of memory: short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory holds temporary information transferred from sensory memory or long-term memory. Sensory memory is the first stage of memory and obtains information for a brief amount of time. Short-term memory is also called active memory and is stored in the prefrontal cortex which is the most active part of the brain during an activity. Short-term memory can hold information for roughly twenty seconds, but sensory memory holds information for a shorter amount of time. We usually store things such
Remembrance is an integral part of our everyday lives. Both pleasant and unpleasant memories shape who we are as human beings. The definition of memory is two fold 1. “the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information” and 2. “Something remembered from the past; a recollection” (Google Definition). The life of memory has three stages in which it is created. An event occurs in ones life it becomes encoded and stored in the brain. Following the encoding, the brain then has full access to retrieve the memory in a response to any current activity or thought. Memories are unique to each person. There are three main types of memories that are studied. An individual memory is one that is formed by his or her personal experiences. An institutional
Memories are scattered across the brain in the many regions we have. However, there are a few different types of memories which are: Declarative (also known as Explicit) which this type of memory is about facts and events, and then there's Nondeclarative (also known as implicit) which has more to do with your skills and habits, priming, simple classic conditioning, which is where your emotional response and skeletal musculature comes in, also, nonassociative learning. The common ones that most know of are short-term and long-term memory. Have you ever wondered how the brain develops as you get older and why we remember the things we do? Our memories
Mechanical or rote repetition of the information is a great way to remember this information. The more time you spend rehearsing the information the longer the information will be remembered. This is actually a poor way of remembering things because it doesn’t make the information meaningful; “surface processing”. Elaborative Rehearsal is a more effective way of remembering information through “deep processing”, which is relating the information to information you already know. This technique is used in more in the education system than maintenance rehearsal. Even with these two ways to store things we still run into filling errors. Filling errors are where your brain has filed information incorrectly. The final step in the memory process is retrieval. Retrieval is the locating of stored information and returning it into your conscious thoughts. There are a few cues that help us retrieve them, such as priming, context, and state. Priming is the nonconscious identification or words and objects, by referring in to particular representations or associations in the memory just before carrying out the action or task. The memories that come back to your conscious mind when you are in a certain place or area are called context, dependent memories. When you are in a certain emotional state you many retrieve memories of when you were also in that same emotional
I. Introduction II. Dementia Senility is a misused term for the loss of ability to think, reason, and remember in older persons. Senility is not a medical condition; it is not normal, natural, or inevitable with aging; it is not limited to older people either. The term senility is replaced in most of my pertinent research by the medical term dementia, which seems to describe a group of symptoms that represent a change or deterioration from an individual's previous level of functioning (Tueth, 1995). Dementia has specific causes, which impair long-term memory and quite relevantly;: language, judgment, spatial perception, behavior, and often personality, interfering with normal social and occupational functioning.
...Baddeley (1966) study of encoding in the short term memory and long term memory supports the MSM model on the mode of processing such that words are processed on recall and both models share the same opinion that processing does influence recall. Finally, the MSM model of memory states that all information is stored in the long term memory, however, this interpretation contrasts with that of Baddeley (1974) who argue that we store different types of memories and it is unlikely that they occur only in the LTM store. Additionally, other theories have recognised different types of memories that we experience, therefore it is debatable that all these different memories occur only in the long-term memory as presumed by the multi-store model which states the long term memory store as with unlimited capacity, in addition it also fails to explain how we recall information.
Human memory is flexible and prone to suggestion. “Human memory, while remarkable in many ways, does not operate like a video camera” (Walker, 2013). In fact, human memory is quite the opposite of a video camera; it can be greatly influenced and even often distorted by interactions with its surroundings (Walker, 2013). Memory is separated into three different phases. The first phase is acquisition, which is when information is first entered into memory or the perception of an event (Samaha, 2011). The next phase is retention. Retention is the process of storing information during the period of time between the event and the recollection of a piece of information from that event (Samaha, 2011). The last stage is retrieval. Retrieval is recalling stored information about an event with the purpose of making an identification of a person in that event (Samaha, 2011).
The first issue that needs to be addressed however is what exactly is memory? “ Without memory we would be servants of the moment, with nothing but our innate reflexes to help us deal with the world. There would be no language, no art, no science, no culture. Civilization itself is the distillation of human memory” (Blakemore 1988). The simple interpretation of Blakemore’s theory on what memory is that a person’s memory is at least one of the most important things in their life and without it civilization itself could not exist.
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
The human body is a complex structure. The brain being the most complex organ has the most work to do. The human memory consists of a process in which memories are stored and remembered. According to Intelegen Inc., there is this unique process of Memory in which the process only involves three stages. In the stages of this process, the memory is formed, retained, and retrieved. There are three stages of the five different types of Memory; the three stages are encoding, storage and retrieval.
In studying memory, researchers have devised various tasks that require participants to remember "arbitrary information" (Merkle). Memory tasks typically involve either recall or recognition. In recall memory you would be asked to give a fact, a word, or an item from memory. In recognition memory you are asked to identify from various things the correct word, fact, or item. How then do humans remember these things? It involves the human memory process, containing encoding, storing, and retrieving any information being given to us.