preview

Memory And Sensory Memory

Decent Essays

Everyday people rely on memory. Remembering to set your clock the night before, the routine you do every morning getting ready for the day, remembering what you must do for the day, and remembering something as simple as making a sandwich. None of this is possible without memory. Memory is the ability to be able to mentally remember and manipulate information. Memory can be affected by strong emotions, injuries and diseases. There are different types of memory; sensory, short-term, and long-term memory. Sensory memory is sensory information coming at you that you can be retained for a few milliseconds. It’s the shortest memory out of the three and is held just long enough to move to short-term memory. In sensory memory, we have iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory. Iconic memory is the visual memory one sees and retains. When looking at objects, faces, words, or numbers your brain may choose to keep some information and move it to short-term memory. When you are exposed visually to something, majority of the time its lost within 500milliseconds. Negative effects can cause sensory memory capacity to decrease but the precision of what is seen increases (Spachtholz, Kuhbandner, & Pekrun, 2014.) When exposed to negative sensory, what you can remember is decreased but the detail of what you remember is more accurate.
Echoic memory is a sensory memory that is specific to receiving auditory information. Majority of what we hear is forgotten in 1 second. Sensory memory allows us to collect information and process it just long enough to move to short term memory. After sensory memory, there is short-term memory or as some call it working memory. Here, memory is stored long enough to use it. When a task is needed to be completed, it is obtained here and may be quickly forgotten after the task is complete. Short-term memory and long-term memory can work back and forth. Information that is deemed important and to be remembered goes to long-term memory and when you need to remember something, it comes from your long-term memory and goes back to short-term memory. After it is used, it goes back to long-term memory to be recalled at a later time. Information that comes from sensory memory and is not forgotten

Get Access