Page 3 - LN 1_Human Memory

✓ It has been shown that once any information enters the long-term memory store
it is never forgotten because it gets encoded semantically, i.e. in terms of the
meaning that any information carries.

HOW DOES INFORMATION TRAVEL FROM ONE STORE TO ANOTHER?

▪ Atkinson and Shiffrin propose the notion of control processes which function to
monitor the flow of information through various memory stores.
▪ Only that information which is attended to enters the STM from sensory registers
and in that sense, selective attention, is the first control process that decides what
will travel from sensory registers to STM.
▪ The STM then sets into motion two other control processes

1. Maintenance Rehearsal to retain the information for as much time as required
through repetition.
2. Chunking which operates in STM to expand its capacity.
▪ From the STM, information enters the long-term memory through elaborative
rehearsals.
▪ As against maintenance rehearsals, which are carried through silent or vocal
repetition, this rehearsal attempts to connect the ‘to be retained information’ to the

already existing information in long-term memory.

CONTRADICTING EXPERIEMNTS RESULTS

❖ Experiments, which were carried out to test the stage model of memory, have
produced mixed results.

❖ While some experiments unequivocally show that the STM and LTM are indeed
two separate memory stores,

❖ Other evidences have questioned their distinctiveness.

❖ For example, earlier it was shown that in the STM information is encoded
acoustically, while in LTM it is encoded semantically

❖ BUT later experimental evidences show that information can also be encoded
semantically in STM and acoustically in LTM.

❖ Shallice and Warrington in the year 1970 had cited the case of a man known as KF
who met with an accident and damaged a portion of the left side of his cerebral
hemisphere.

❖ Subsequently, it was found that his long-term memory was intact but the short-
term memory was seriously affected.