example of visual encoding in psychology

Learn more about the Atkinson and Shiffrin’s multi-store model here 2. Key information regarding people that we have met, important life events and other important facts makes it through the sensory and short-term memory stores to reach the long-term memory.

Rehearsal then further promotes this significant information to the long-term memory store, where Atkinson and Shiffrin believed that it could survive for years, decades or even a lifetime. This may involve merely recalling and thinking about a past event, or remembering a fact by rote - by thinking or writing about it repeatedly. Therefore, we need to further rehearse information in the short-term memory to remember it for longer. The short-term memory gives us access to information that is salient to our current situation, but is limited in its capacity. A sight or sound that we might find interesting captures our attention, and our contemplation of this information - known as rehearsal - leads to the data being promoted to the short-term memory store, where it will be held for a few hours or even days in case we need access to it. As a result, most sensory information ‘ decays’ and is forgotten after a short period of time. This stream of information is held in the sensory memory store, and because it consists of a huge amount of data describing our surroundings, we only need to remember a small portion of it. Information enters the memory from the senses - for instance, the eyes observe a picture, olfactory receptors in the nose might smell coffee or we might hear a piece of music. Information passes from one stage to the next the more we rehearse it in our minds, but can fade away if we do not pay enough attention to it. This model suggested that information exists in one of 3 states of memory: the sensory, short-term and long-term stores. Multi-Store Model (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)Īn influential theory of memory known as the multi-store model was proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968.

Example of visual encoding in psychology