The Three Stage Memory Model is a model which helps us understand how memories are stored and retrieved.

• According to the model there are three types of memory:

• Sensory memory• Short-Term memory• Long-Term memory

Sensory Memory

First comes Sensory Memory, which briefly

stores information from the environment

the smell of a rose…

the feel of your clothes…

the sound of a car engine

The information is retained for only a short amount of time…

Before is disappears….

• Information from our senses floods into our sensory memory, and could easily overwhelm us.

• We use Selective Attention to attend only to information we are interested in.

• For example we filter out all other sounds in the bar to listen to our friend.

• Or at a busy junction we focus on the traffic light.

Information comes from the world into sensory memory.

What we attend to is transferred (encoded) to

Short Term Memory

Short-Term Memory

Short-Term Memory is like a “paste board” of the sensory memories we are interested in.

These impressions can linger in short term

memory for up to 30 seconds

The impressions might be encoded into Long-Term Memory…

Or they might just disappear….

Long-Term Memory

Long Term Memory can be seen as a big filing cabinet storing everything about us

• Things we can do

• Things we know

• Our own personal story

New information is transferred from

Short Term Memory to Long Term Memory

(encoding).

Can we do anything to stop information floating out of our

Short Term Memory?

• We try to keep the information we want in STM by repeating it. An example when we look up a telephone number and repeat it to ourselves until we get to the phone “57 84 23…. 57 84 23…”

• This is called Maintenance Rehearsal

Can we do anything to improve the encoding of information into Long

Term Memory?• We can use Elaborative Rehearsal to try and

improve what is stored in LTM.• Elaborative Rehearsal is the active processing

of items to improve memory. We try to use techniques which exploit the kind of things the brain in likely to remember.

Information is more likely to be transferred to Long Term Memory if…• We pay attention to the information (high

amount of interest)• The information is rich in colour, shape and

texture• The information is repeated• The new information relates to things we

already know