Page 203 - Keys To Community College Success

KEY 7.1 Understand the information processing model of memory.

Rehearsal
1 4

2 3 5

Memory and Studying
SENSORY SHORT-TERM LONG-TERM
REGISTERS MEMORY MEMORY
(Sensory OR WORKING (Permanent
Memory) MEMORY Memory Storage)

6
Retrieval

history text describes Abraham Lincoln’s presidency—you remember few. Uncon-
sciously, your brain sorts through stimuli and stores only what it considers important.
Learning and memories occur through chemical and structural changes in the
brain—neurons (brain cells) growing new dendrites, strengthening synapses or forming
new ones, and communicating information over those synapses using chemicals called
neurotransmitters. Look at Key 7.1 as you read how the brain forms lasting memories:
SENSORY REGISTER
1. Raw information, gathered through the f ve senses, reaches the brain (for example: Brain filters through which
the tune of a song you’re learning in your jazz ensemble class). sensory information enters
2. This information enters sensory registers, where it stays for only seconds (as the brain and is sent to
you play the notes for the f rst time, the sounds stop in short-term memory). short-term memory.
3. You then pay attention to the information that seems most important to you.
This moves it into short-term memory, or working memory, which contains what you SHORT-TERM MEMORY
are thinking at any moment and makes information available for further processing The brain’s temporary
(the part of the song that you’re responsible for—for example, the clarinet solo—will information storehouse in
likely take up residence in your working memory). To do this, your brain improves which information remains
the functioning of synapses (the gaps between cells across which electrical pulses carry for a limited time
messages), but doesn’t yet make more permanent changes to neurons. You can tem- (from a few seconds
1
to half a minute).
porarily keep information in short-term memory through rote rehearsal—the process
of repeating information to yourself or even out loud.
4. Information moves to long-term memory through focused, active rehearsal LONG-TERM MEMORY
repeated over time (as you practice the song, your brain stores the tone, rhythm, and information storehouse
The brain’s permanent
pace in your long-term memory where you will be able to draw on it again). To create from which information
these memories, brain cells grow new dendrites and build new synapses, which grow can be retrieved.
stronger the more times the same electrical signal passes through them (created by your
repetition). Long-term memory is the storage house for everything you know, from Civil
2
War battle dates to the location of your grade school. Most people retain memories of
personal experiences and procedures longer than concepts, facts, formulas, and dates.

Long-term memory has three separate storage houses, as shown in Key 7.2.
When you need a piece of information from long-term memory, the brain retrieves it
and places it in short-term memory. On test day, this enables you to choose the right
answer on a multiple-choice question or lay out a fact-based argument for an essay ques-
tion. This movement of information in your brain from short-term to long-term memory
and then back again strengthens synapses much in the same way as repetition does.

165