The Characteristics of Short and Long Term Memory and The Theories of Forgetting
In our up beat and fast paced lives we see and store countless facts, experiences, skills, etc. Our ability to remember these things are of the up most importance in surviving our crazy and complicated lives. There are two ways we encode, or store knowledge. We either store it short term or long term.
When we store short term-memory it is only stored for a very short amount of time before it is stored or forgotten. A good example of short term memory our book provides is, when someone tells us their seven digit phone number and we remember it long enough to put it in our phones, but then soon forget it. I think this example gives a good representation on how long we need to remember something for it to be considered short term memory. Now back to my example of the telephone number, if you were to not forget that phone number after it was entered into your phone it would be considered to be moved into long term memory.
When we encode something into long term memory it is most times in our brain permanently. Our long term memory is described in the text book as, "an unlimited store house of knowledge, skills, and experiences." The human memory system is a truly an amazing thing, but for various reasons our memory tends to fail. This process is called forgetting.
Forgetting is a pretty self explanatory thing. It simply means we cannot remember certain things anymore. There are two types of forgetting: Anterograde amnesia, and retrograde amnesia. When one experiences anterograde amnesia they can recall things from their past, but they are unable to retain new information. Retrograde amnesia is the exact opposite. They can form new memories for a short period of time before they are moved to long term memory. Once a person who suffers retrograde amnesia forgets the short term memory it is gone forever.
Below I have two sources. The first is a link to a youtbe video that goes over both retrograde and anterograde amnesia and provides examples. The second link is also a link to youtube video. This video goes over the differences between short term and long term memory.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omphbdtaw3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kinViqmpIyU
When we store short term-memory it is only stored for a very short amount of time before it is stored or forgotten. A good example of short term memory our book provides is, when someone tells us their seven digit phone number and we remember it long enough to put it in our phones, but then soon forget it. I think this example gives a good representation on how long we need to remember something for it to be considered short term memory. Now back to my example of the telephone number, if you were to not forget that phone number after it was entered into your phone it would be considered to be moved into long term memory.
When we encode something into long term memory it is most times in our brain permanently. Our long term memory is described in the text book as, "an unlimited store house of knowledge, skills, and experiences." The human memory system is a truly an amazing thing, but for various reasons our memory tends to fail. This process is called forgetting.
Forgetting is a pretty self explanatory thing. It simply means we cannot remember certain things anymore. There are two types of forgetting: Anterograde amnesia, and retrograde amnesia. When one experiences anterograde amnesia they can recall things from their past, but they are unable to retain new information. Retrograde amnesia is the exact opposite. They can form new memories for a short period of time before they are moved to long term memory. Once a person who suffers retrograde amnesia forgets the short term memory it is gone forever.
Below I have two sources. The first is a link to a youtbe video that goes over both retrograde and anterograde amnesia and provides examples. The second link is also a link to youtube video. This video goes over the differences between short term and long term memory.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omphbdtaw3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kinViqmpIyU