The acquisition of memories

Psychology 2421

Acquisition

• process of gaining information and placing it into memory

Storage

• holding this information in memory

Retrieval

• locating the information in storage and bringing it into active use

The modal model of information processing

• incoming information

• sensory memory

  • maintenance

• short-term/working memory

• long-term memory

  • retrieval

• information loss

Sensory memory

• short moment where you feel like you have access to everything that you seen

• shortly slips away

Maintenance

• keeping things in our short-term memory

• actively thinking about something

Short-term/working memory

• holds onto memory for short-term

• need maintenance to keep it in head

• once we stop thinking about it or we use it, it falls out of short-term memory

Long-term memory

• stored memories that we can think back on later

• takes lots of effort to encode it

• has very large capacity

  • endless

Retrieval

• moment where we remember something from long-term memory and bring it back to working memory to think about it

Information l