Short-term memory

Tema	Anglų kalba
Tipas	Topikas
Aprašymas	When we attend to new information, from sensory memory (SeM) it goes to short-term memory (SM). It contains all the information that we are thinking about and ‘’working on’’ now. In this sense it is our current consciousness, where info is held just enough for a decision to be made on further processing, especially encoding for long-term memory (LM) storage. All the info that we are thinking about right now comes from two sources: SeM and LM. Material in SM stays active 15 –30s, if it is not used or processed further. If material is actively attended to, rehearsed, or otherwise thought about, it can remain in SM indefinitely.
Patalpinta	2005-05-09
Parsisiuntė	112
	Parsisiųsti7 KB

Išsamus aprašymas

SM is a intermediary (tarpininkas) storage between SeM and LM. One of its functions is in some way to process information and transmit it for further processing and storage. For this first of all is used encoding. Acoustic encoding is very common in SM and for a long time psychologists thought that was the only method of encoding. Evidence of its importance is documented by that show, for example, the letters T and C are more likely to be confused in SM than C and O, even when they are presented visually.Such results suggest that subjects are recoding the visual symbols to acoustic representations, thus explaining why the similar-sounding C and T are more easily confuced than the different-sounding C and O. There is ample evidence of visual and especially semantic encoding in SM as well.
One of the most important aspects of SM is its limited capacity. It is 7 ± 2 elements for a wide variety of materials. There is a tremenduous amount of variation of what can be put into each of those seven bits. For example, we can hold seven numbers in our SM, but also7 words, 7 pictures, or sometimes even 7 sentences. In fact, the bits may be made considerably larger through the processes of chunking, by which we combine pieces of information together to allow them to take up less space in working memory.
Another important process that occurs in SM is rehearsal, the temporary activation or recycling or information through memory. Rehearsal may be maintenance (holds information in SM long enough for it to be acted upon in some way) or elaborative (nuodugnus) rehearsal (helps transfer information to LM). Elaborative rehearsal relates information to other concepts already in LM and and develops new asociations between these concepts.
The explanations offered for forgetting from SM generally cluster around two general phenomena. On the one hand forgetting is said to occur due to decay of the memory trace over time. The other class of explanations uses the consept of interference. Material is forgotten because other material that is similar is some way interferes by replacing or distorting it. Interference may be retroactive, which means it occurs after original leaning. And proactive, when interfering material comes first and hinder the learning of something else later.
We use SM when we are thinking about something at the moment, solving problems (in this case information is retrieved from LM to SM). SM plays a role in understanding language. Findings suggest that we have a special memory system for processing language. A patient who has a defective memory span but normal language understanding has an impaired SM but an intact language memory. The special memory for language seems limited to relatively simple sentences. Once sentences become complex SM is brought in for help. When it come sto higher-level language processes like following a conversation or reading a text, SM appears to play a crucial role. When reading for understanding, often we must consciously relate new sentences to some prior material in the text.

Raktiniai žodžiai

• acoustic encoding in short term memory
• recycling topikas
• rašinys memory