In this video I begin the memory unit by introducing a few key terms (encoding, storage, and retrieval), explaining why it’s important not to extend the “mind as computer” analogy too far, and briefly outlining the 3-Box model of memory first proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin, which includes stores for sensory, short-term, and long-term memory.
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Video Transcript:
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In this video we’re going to begin exploring the topic of memory.
Now when we talk about memory, there’s three terms that we’re going to use repeatedly. These are encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding refers to when we create a memory, when we first input that memory into our mind. Storage, of course, refers to storing the memory over time. Retrieval refers to accessing the memory.
Now you’ll notice that these three terms are all sort of analogous to the terms you would use to talk about a computer storing memory. This is a useful analogy on some occasions but it’s important to remember that this is a very very big oversimplification of how the mind works. Your brain is much much more complicated than even the most advanced of computers and the way that memory works is not really like a computer.
Even though we use these terms, it’s not a good idea to think of memories as being stored the way a computer stores memory. The reason for this is that for us there’s a possibility of error and bias at each of these steps of the memory process. In other words, we can input memories incorrectly and we can have memories change over time. If you store a memory on a computer the information just stays there and when you access it later it’s exactly the same.
That’s not how your mind works. We’re going to see that repeatedly in this unit. When you access a memory you can actually change it. Each time you recall a memory and you sort of “re-encode” back into your long-term memory, there’s a chance that you’ve modified it a bit. That there’s some bias to it. So keep in mind that failures are possible at any of these steps and in this way it’s very differently from the way that a computer stores information.
On a computer, assuming you input the information correctly, it will just store an identical copy of that information and when you call it up it will be exactly the same as it was when you put it in.
Your mind doesn’t work that way and we’ll see that, as I said, repeatedly. Ok, so one way to think about memory is to divide it up into different types of memory and so the model that we’re going to start with is called the 3-box model.
This also called the Atkinson-Shiffrin model because it was first proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin. So the three box model divides memory storage up into three main stores. The first of these stores is the sensory store.
This is very very brief. This lasts for only about a second. So when information first comes it’s in this sensory store and we can pay attention to only a small fraction of that information. The information that’s available to you at any time is essentially infinite.
Just look around the room, all of the things you could pay attention to is essentially endless. Some of that you’re going to pay attention to, that means some of it has the possibility of moving to the next stage of the memory process and this is short term memory.
The short term store lasts a little bit longer but it’s still pretty brief. At most, maybe a few minutes but probably much shorter than that, on the matter of 30 seconds or perhaps even less. So this is a short term store that is able to hold some of that information that you first took in. Some of that information from the sensory store is going to make it to the short term store.
Then some of that information is going to make it to the long-term memory store. This is information that we can hold for, again it could be a few minutes, or it could be as long as a lifetime. You could have memories from your childhood that stay with you for your entire life. Now these memories are still subject to bias and change over time, but we could consider them as being long-term memories that last for decades.
So we have this process of moving from each of these stores to the next. An encoding process that occurs to move sensory information to short term memory and another encoding process to move into long-term storage.
Along the way, if we think of these as boxes here because this is the 3-box model, along the way, some information is going to be lost. There’s going to be information that’s not encoded. There’s going to be things in your short-term memory that you lose. There’s going to be things, as you probably know when test day arrives and that memory you thought was in your long-term memory isn’t actually there, there’s going to be some loss of information at any of these steps.
It’s important to remember that this is obviously a simplification. It’s a very simple model of how memory works. There’s a lot of things that are missing from this model and there’s things that it doesn’t account for. We’ll see that as well but in general it’s a pretty good way to divide up our memory storage into the sensory store, short-term store, and long-term store. In the next few videos we’ll take a look at each of these types of storage in a little more detail.
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Thanks for watching!
