Short-term memory can hold around 7 digits for about 20 seconds, but sensory memory lasts less than a second. Long-term memory stores all remembered information, but chunking can help improve short-term memory. Making memories meaningful can help them move to long-term memory.
When a person doesn’t have a pen and is given a phone number that they need to call immediately, can they remember that phone number (usually 7 digits), for more than a few seconds? It can be difficult to remember the digits in order and keep them in what is called short-term memory, which can also be referred to as active or working memory. Most people assigned the phone number would be able to remember at least 5 numbers, many people can remember all 7, and some could remember an even longer number. As the seconds pass, however, the memory would not be retained, unless the person kept the number in memory by repeating it regularly enough.
Most models of the ways humans remember postulate that there are three memory systems. Although short-term memory is short-lived, lasting about 20 seconds for most things, there is an even shorter memory process called sensory memory. This captures visual and audio (seen and heard) information and keeps a copy of it. However, we tend not to remember any of this, as these copies last less than a second.
As opposed to short-term memory and sensory memory, there is long-term memory. This stores all the things we have remembered and, according to many psychologists, many things we don’t know we have remembered. It’s a huge network or data storage unit, constantly gathering more information as people progress through life. When people want to convert a short-term memory into a long-term one, a specific meaning usually has to be attached or it doesn’t remain.
The reason the example in the first paragraph was used is because short-term memory studies are often done by asking people to remember the digits of numbers. In the 1950s, and since then, it has been repeatedly shown that people can reliably remember 7 plus or minus 2 digits. Those who appear to have the best short-term memory of digits may also have the best long-term memory of digits, and they do so by a process called chunking. Instead of remembering a seven-digit sequence, they tend to remember a three- and four-digit sequence. People who can remember phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and the like usually have evolved a process of breaking down numbers so they’re easy.
The distinction between short-term and long-term memory is important and can help people learn and memorize. It really makes people realize that learning style has to include a way to make things meaningful so that memories move to the area of the brain where they will be remembered for more than a few seconds. There are many different learning strategies that can help in this regard.
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