Memory Capacity
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Memory Capacity
SHORT-TERM MEMORY CAPACITY
- Able to hold seven bits of information (plus or minus two) at any given time.
CHUNKING
- Large amount of information is organized into fewer chunks or bits.
- Example - combine telephone digits into larger chunks to reduce their memory burden (18005551212 chunks into 1-800, 555, 1212).
- Synesthesia allows for sensorial chunking, which allows for an astonishing ability to chunk extremely large quantities of information (example - numbers are represented as colors and take on personalities).
MEMORY CONSOLIDATION
- Encoding - the process in which information is transformed into a format in which it can be stored and retrieved, occurs in the limbic lobe (most notably, in the Papez and amygdaloid circuits)
- Storage - the stockpiling of memory into its stored state, occurs in the neocortex.
- Retrieval - the accessing of stored memories.
MULTIPLE MEMORY TRACE THEORY
- Purports that the hippocampal-neocortical bond for episodic memory does not decay but, instead, persists as part of a memory scaffold (every time an episodic memory is retrieved, an additional memory trace is formed, and the hippocampal-neocortical ensemble of that memory is strengthened).
ANTEROGRADE AMNESIA
- Inability to form new memories after the development of amnesia.
RETROGRADE AMNESIA
- Inability to retrieve memories that occurred prior to the development of the amnesia.