Can Human Memory be Improved?
Sensory Register, Short-Term Memory and
Long-Term Memory

One prominent view conceives of memory as the flow of information through the mind. In a number of statements about this view, three broad stages of information processing can be distinguished. First, there is the sensory register, a very short-term sensory memory of the event. At the second level is a short-term, or working memory.

Roughly speaking, the sensory register concerns memories that last no more than about a second. If a line of print were flashed at you very rapidly, say, for one-tenth of a second, all the letters you can visualize for a brief moment after that presentation constitute the sensory register. This visualization disappears after a second.

When you are trying to recall a telephone number that was heard a few seconds earlier, the name of a person who has just been introduced, or the substance of the remarks just made by a teacher in class, you are calling on short-term memory, or working memory. This lasts from a few seconds to a minute; the exact amount of time may vary somewhat. You need this kind of memory to retain ideas and thoughts as you work on problems. In writing a letter, for example, you must be able to keep the last sentence in mind as you compose the next. To solve an arithmetic problem like (3 X 3) + (4 X 2) in your head, you need to keep the intermediate results in mind (i.e., 3 X 3 = 9) to be able to solve the entire problem.

Long-term memory lasts from a minute or so to weeks or even years. From long-term memory you can recall general information about the world that you learned on previous occasions, memory for specific past experiences, specific rules previously learned, and the like.