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Cognitive psychologists define memory in three distinct stores: sensory information storage (SIS), the short-term (STM)/ working memory and long-term (LTM). These three distinct memory processes differ in function, the amount of time the information is stored, the way the information is retained and the capacity of the brain to handle the received information.Sensory information storage has an unlimited capacity in the brain. Why do we view a film as being a continuous moving image when it is shot at 24 frames per second? SIS makes it possible for us to perceive this moving image fluidly and not as a series of still images because visual and auditory stimuli retain in the memory for a fraction of a second through the phenomena of iconic and echoic memory. The sensory organs receive this information and leave a visual trace of the event longer than the event itself in order for the brain to process what we hear or see.George Miller, an American psychologist, in his famous 1956 study on memory span, came up with ‘the magical number seven, plus or minus two’ to describe the amount of pieces of information a person could hold in the forefront of their memory. This short-term or working memory, as it is now referred, comprises information that is stored for a few seconds to a few minutes and the manipulation and use of stored information in a person’s brain.Information is circulated in working memory in a number of ways. Rehearsing a piece of information, such as repeating a phone number over and over again holds this piece of data for a very brief period of time. If a person becomes distracted during this rehearsal, the number can be easily forgotten. Working memory has limitations, the information can only be stored for a short amount of time. If a person is dictated a list of 10-20 cities and asked to repeat them back after the complete list is spoken, most people can only recall five to six of the city names given, most often remembered are the names in the beginning and the end. This is due to the attention given to the act of concentrating, interpreting or listening to the current information being received by the senses. Working memory’s limitations force the person’s capacity from doing all these things at once.Some of the information received in working memory is then processed to long-term memory. This is done through a process of encoding or consolidation of information. Meaning and emotional content play a part in retaining information into LTM. What a person stores in his or her LTM is the knowledge that affects their perception of the world, skills the person has learned and personal memories from childhood, for example. LTM is a storage system in the brain that can hold extensive information on a reasonably lasting basis. It is believed by cognitive psychologists that the capacity for long-term memory is infinite. Throughout people’s lives, new skills can be learned, new subjects can be studied and this new information will be retained and stored in LTM. Episodic memory, semantic memory and procedural memory are the three systems of LTM.
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