Magnetic Pages Article | 1992-09-02 | 4KB | 29 lines
MPARTICLE
MEMORY# (I have failed to forget to add a
title)
$It is pretty strange really. For the$first few years of our lives we have
some of the most amazing!experiences, such as speaking and$walking etc. for the first time, but#we do not have as distinct a memory of these events, and these first
four years as we have of other%events. It cannot be just the passing$of time, because I can remember much more about being six now, than I could remember about being four,%just a couple of years ago. I suppose!it mainly has to do with the fact"that in the first two years of our lives, our brain is still in the"process of forming, as the neurons#join together into a neural network
in the brain, according to what#we learn. This may help to explain,#but in that case, how is it that we$can remember how to walk, but cannot!remember actually walking for the%first time. These memories of course,%were created at the same time, though$we definitely have re-remembered how!to walk a greater number of times$than re-remembering our actual first#steps. There is a reasonable theory%that has been put forward, suggesting
that there are three stages of#memory. The first stage is known as#"sensory memory". It holds incoming#information from the senses (sight,!hearing, smell, taste, touch) for short periods, often less than a!second, before the information is$either rejected, or passed on to the#short-term memory area. This second#stage, "short-term memory" can hold#up to about seven or eight items at one time.# The information it holds is easily
distributed, and if it isn't!rehearsed im mediately it will be$forgotten within half a minute. This$stage of memory is used when we want
to hold a piece of information$temporarily, for example a telephone!number, or a few digits in mental!arithmetic. While something is in"this memory, parts of it are being%selected to go into long term memory,#and the remainder is being rejected#and forgotten. Long-term memory can#be compa red to a filing cabinet or#database. It can store huge amounts#of information for a lifetime. Many%psychologists divide long-term memory
into two areas: semantic and%episodic. Semantic memory consists of
remembering knowledge about the"world, such as the capital city of Ghana, or the name of a river in"China. Episodic memory consists of
remembering incidents, such as"childhood recollections, or a book$you read. Remembering things such as
the meaning of words can be
constituted as part of semantic
memory. ! To illustrate the strangeness of"memory, try this simple test. Read$sentence one, and read it again etc,
looking at it for about twenty$seconds. Then look away, wait twenty!seconds and then try to write the
sentence down as correctly as possible. Then try the same with
sentence two, looking at it for"twenty seconds, looking away for a bit then writing it down without
looking at the answers. !1) She was beautiful, fun-loving,
kind, passionate, healthy and
intelligent.
!2) The sun was setting behind the$hill that Saturday evening in March.
I am sure you will agree that
sentence two is much easier to%recall. This is because it makes more sense, and uses less descriptive#jargon, thus can be accepted into a longer term memory more easily.
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