Three Types Of Memory

“The ability to recollect past events and to bring learned facts and ideas back to mind.” (Foster, 2002)

Types of Memory

According to the Multi Store Model of Human Memory proposed by Atkinson and Shiffirin, memory is of three different types:

(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)

1. Sensory Memory:

Based on the principle of Dual Channel, visual and auditory information enter the sensory memory through separate, independent channels (Low & Sweller, 2014). Though the capacity of the sensory memory system is infinite, the information is only held for 0.25-2 seconds. The information which is brought into our awareness or gains our attention is passed on to the Working Memory System, the rest is lost.

2. Short-Term Memory:

It can only process

Long-Term Memory:

Its capacity is unlimited and the duration can be of a lifetime. Encoding of information is mainly semantic. The three sub-types of the long-term memory are:

a. Semantic- knowledge of the world.

b. Procedural- knowledge of how to do a skill.

c. Episodic- knowledge of past experience.

(Bruning & Norby, n.d.)

Levels-of-processing Theory of Memory

In 1972 Craik and Lockhart rejected the idea of different memory systems and said that memory is just a by-product of the depth of information processing. (Saegert, 1979)

They described three types of processes:

(Mcleod, 2007)

Memory Processes

Psychologists and neuroscientists have identified three processes in memory making. These processes have been confirmed through ECGs and functional MRI tests. (Amin & Malik, 2013)

1. Encoding:

The process through which the form of information entering the memory system is changed in order for the system to recognize and deal with it. There are three types of encoding

First memorize one chunk and then move on to the next. This method works best when the order of the item is not important.

14. Mnemonics

These are encoding strategies used to organize to-be learned material, in order to make them more meaningful and easier to remember.

15. Metamemory

Refers to judgements and decisions we make about our own memory. This includes assessments like: in what situations do I memorize best, what study time suits me best, what duration suits me best, which learning strategy is most helpful etc. And then taking decisions to re track your learning process so that learning is done most effectively. (Schwartz & Son, 2011)

16. Highlighting or underlining important text in your book

This is true to the phenomenon of “isolation effect” i.e. a semantically and phonologically unique text in a list is much better remembered then its less distinctive counterpart. The highlighted or underlined text will “pop-out” from rest of the text in the book. But here, importance should lie on highlighting text actively, with full concentration and knowledge and really highlighting the most important piece of information in the text. (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013)

17.