Memory

Phycology 150-30

Memory “Memory is an active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable form, organizes it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage” (Ciccarelli, S, K & White, J. N. 2010). Memory is a very interesting subject consisting of many different types of memory of which two are short term memory and long term memory. Short term memory is when you forget something quickly in a short amount of time, while with long term memory things are remembered easier and much quicker. You are having a conversation with someone and someone interrupts the conversation and talks about something else, and then you try to remember the conversation you were having before they came along, but you cannot remember and wonder how that happened, it occurred by short term memory loss. “Short term memory loss is the ability to remember a great amount of information for a short period of time” (Lynch, P 2011). Short term memory is easily forgotten, it usually deletes something from a person’s mind very quickly in up to thirty seconds (Lynch, P 2011). There are many causes of short term memory loss such as Alzheimer’s disease, low blood sugar, hormonal havoc from menopause settling on your body, states of depression and stress, consuming alcohol, and substance abuse although, everyone somewhat has short term memory loss because everyone can do something and forget within thirty seconds what they did (Lynch, P 2011). Items in this memory don’t stay there by themselves, they need attention and repetition to be remembered and kept without being forgotten (Turner, D, S 2011 June). Short term memory is associated with working memory and is really the only type of memory it has unlike long term memory (Commins, J 2011). Working memory works as the brains “scratch pad” it keeps information it receives, while short term memory stores the information and determines if the information should be transferred to long term memory (Commins, J 2011). George Miller a known psychologist created the number seven to demonstrate how much information can be held at one time in the short term memory (Ciccarelli, S, K & White, J. N. 2010). He got some people together and created a memory test called the digit-span test of which numbers are read to the participants and they had to remember them in correct order and each one got longer until no one could remember any of the numbers (Ciccarelli, S, K & White, J. N. 2010). After the experiment he found that only about seven things could be remembered at once which is why he called it the magic number seven (Ciccarelli, S, K & White, J. N. 2010). One day in class, the teacher read aloud some numbers we were supposed to remember, we had to listen first then write the numbers from memory just as the participants did in George’s expirement. The numbers started out small but began to get larger each time they were said until we couldn’t exactly remember then all or in correct order. I remembered most of them but put some numbers out of order and left off some numbers out of the large ones, showing my memory couldn’t hold but a certain amount of numbers at once, and they faded away after about a minute. You are listening to the radio and a old song comes on that you haven’t heard in years, but you shockingly remember all the words to the song and wonder how that is possible, it occurs through long term memory. Long term memory is the system into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently (Ciccarelli, S, K & White, J. N. 2010). Long term memory is processed by short term memories moving into the long term memory’s storage