What does sensory memory mean

Sensory memory is an automatic response considered to be outside of cognitive control. Information from sensory memory has the shortest retention time, ranging from mere milliseconds to five seconds.

It is retained just long enough for it to be transferred to short-term working memory. In sensory memory, no manipulation of the incoming information occurs as it is transferred quickly to working memory.

The amount of information is greatly reduced during this transfer because the capacity of working memory is not large enough to cope with all the input coming from our sense organs. It is assumed that there is a subtype of sensory memory for each of the five major senses touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell ; however, only three of these types have been extensively studied: echoic memory, iconic memory, and haptic memory.

Sensory input to the visual system goes into iconic memory, so named because the mental representations of visual stimuli are referred to as icons. Iconic memory has a duration of about ms. Light trails : In iconic memory, you perceive a moving bright light as forming a continuous line because of the images retained in sensory memory for milliseconds. Echoic memory is the branch of sensory memory used by the auditory system.

Echoic memory is capable of holding a large amount of auditory information, but only for 3—4 seconds. This echoic sound is replayed in the mind for this brief amount of time immediately after the presentation of the auditory stimulus. Haptic memory is the branch of sensory memory used by the sense of touch.

Sensory receptors all over the body detect sensations like pressure, itching, and pain, which are briefly held in haptic memory before vanishing or being transported to short-term memory.

This type of memory seems to be used when assessing the necessary forces for gripping and interacting with familiar objects. Haptic memory seems to decay after about two seconds. Evidence of haptic memory has only recently been identified and not as much is known about its characteristics compared to iconic memory. Short-term memory, which includes working memory, stores information for a brief period of recall for things that happened recently.

Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a brief period of time. It is separate from our long-term memory, where lots of information is stored for us to recall at a later time. Unlike sensory memory, it is capable of temporary storage. How long this storage lasts depends on conscious effort from the individual; without rehearsal or active maintenance, the duration of short-term memory is believed to be on the order of seconds.

Short-term memory acts as a scratchpad for temporary recall of information. For instance, in order to understand this sentence you need to hold in your mind the beginning of the sentence as you read the rest. Short-term memory decays rapidly and has a limited capacity.

The psychologist George Miller suggested that human short-term memory has a forward memory span of approximately seven items plus or minus two. More recent research has shown that this number is roughly accurate for college students recalling lists of digits, but memory span varies widely with populations tested and with material used. For example, the ability to recall words in order depends on a number of characteristics of these words: fewer words can be recalled when the words have longer spoken duration this is known as the word-length effect or when their speech sounds are similar to each other this is called the phonological similarity effect.

More words can be recalled when the words are highly familiar or occur frequently in the language. Chunking of information can also lead to an increase in short-term memory capacity. For example, it is easier to remember a hyphenated phone number than a single long number because it is broken into three chunks instead of existing as ten digits.

Rehearsal is the process in which information is kept in short-term memory by mentally repeating it. When the information is repeated each time, that information is re-entered into the short-term memory, thus keeping that information for another 10 to 20 seconds, the average storage time for short-term memory.

Distractions from rehearsal often cause disturbances in short-term memory retention. This accounts for the desire to complete a task held in short-term memory as soon as possible.

It holds temporary data in the mind where it can be manipulated. According to Baddeley, working memory has a phonological loop to preserve verbal data, a visuospatial scratchpad to control visual data, and a central executive to disperse attention between them. We could roughly say that it is a system specialized for language.

Sensory memories become memories in our brain through a process called encoding. There are three types of this encoding: visual encoding, acoustic encoding, and semantic encoding. Seeing an image in your mind, like the Adidas logo or the image of your favorite album cover, is the result of visual encoding. Having a tune stuck in your head is the result of acoustic encoding.

And any impact, feelings, or context that connect these visual and acoustic memories is the result of semantic encoding. How do we know the length of sensory memory? A cognitive psychologist named George Sperling helped us find the answer. In the s, Sperling produced an experiment to test sensory storage and memory. He each participant a viewfinder. In the blink of an eye, the letters were gone. Then, Sperling ran a bell that indicated to participants that they needed to recite the top, middle, or bottom row of letters.

Other times, the bell went off a second or two after the letters disappeared. Once a second or more had passed by, the participants lost the memory of the letters. Sensory memory moves fast. One theory is that sensory storage is limited.

We know that working memory, or short-term memory, is quite limited. Unless things are committed to long-term memory fast, they will go away. This rings true for sensory memory as well. Our eyes, ears, etc. When new information comes in, something has got to go.

Before you started watching this video, you could probably guess that sensory memory had to do with the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In reality, there are many more senses than just the five we are taught in grade school. Sensory memory is vital to helping you process and compute the world around you. Once you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste sensory information, your brain may either process or discard the sensations.

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What is sensory memory? Types of sensory memory. Examples of sensory memory.