The Three Stages Of Memory

Believe it or not, memory affects all aspects of our lives. “Is memory a process or a place? Well the answer to that is not simple. Memory is a process but also has a place in the brain. Perhaps the best definition of memory is that it’s an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage.” (Ciccarelli, Harrigan, Fritzley. (2010) pg. 230) We have insane amounts of memory stored inside our brains that are divided between Sensory, short term and long term memory. Throughout the day we access these parts of the brain without even noticing it. So then if our memory has unlimited capacity, then why do we forget? Our organization plays a huge role …show more content…
The first stage encoding is the initial recording of information. Whether you are listening to a lecture, watching a movie or listening to music you are encoding information into memory. "Some information gets into memory, virtually automatically while other information takes effort. “. (Santrock, John W., Mittener, John D. 2001. pg. 219) Next, the information is transferred to storage- the retention of information over time. After encoding the information, we need to retain it. The three main stores of memory are the sensory, short-term and long-term memory which varies according to memory. The first stage of memory, sensory memory holds information from the environment in its original sensory form for only an instant. sensory memory is very detailed, but the information in it is very quickly lost unless certain processes are engaged in the transfer to short-term or long-term. The second stage of memory, short-term- a limited capacity memory system in which information is retained for as long as thirty seconds unless the information is rehearsed in which case would transfer into the long term memory. The last stage, long-term memory- a relatively permanent type of memory that holds huge amounts of information for a long period of time. "Von Neumann assumed we never forget anything, but we know that 's not true, although we can retain several billion more information than a large computer we still forget things that have no significance to us."(Santrock,Mittener. 2001. pg. 226) The last process of memory, retrieval- recovery of stored information. In order to retrieve something from your mental data bank, you search your store of memory to find relevant information. You either remember something or you don’t, right? Wrong. “Partial memories are common. Partial memory is demonstrated by the tip of the tongue state- the feeling that a memory is available but not retrievable” (Coon, D., Mittener,