- Episodic memory (events)
- Semantic memory (skills)
Psychologists are able to draw a distinction between the two different types. Episodic memory is our memory for particular events and how where and when things happened. Whereas semantic memory is more concerned with skills and how we do things. We are then able to distinguish our every day skills and also are good and bad memories.
There are also three stages of the memory.
- Encoding
- Storage
- Retrieval
When we are memorizing information there are three stages it goes through for us to remember. To get a mental representation we first we need to code the information then store it for a while then we can retrieve it.
There are many different ways of remembering; when the information is retrieved directly from memory at will this will be called recall. When the information is identified as familiar when we see it or hear it again this is called recognition. There is also reconstruction where the information is re-organised, and re-learning savings this is when the information has been learned once and takes less time to be learned again.
Within the memory there is the two-process theory of memory the first one is short-term memory (STM) this is where there is only a limited number of items and disappears Quickly. The other is Long-term memory (LTM) which can hold a lot more information than the (STM). The theory is that short-term memory store acts as an entry system for information to pass into long-term memory.
Craik and Lockhart (1973) believed that the reason that we remembered things was that we remembers things for very short time and others for longer periods they don’t hold them in different stores they just process them less. If you were interested in an item of information you would process it. So you would think about it and what it meant and what the implications where and then you would remember it. Levels of processing theory argue that it is what we do with the information, which determines how we will remember it.
Atkinson and Shiffrin’s came up with the two process theory in 1968. The Key features of this process were, incoming sensory information, short term memory, displacement, rehearsal and long term memory and retrieval. Individuals were asked to listen to a long list of words spoken one at a time and then write as many down as they can remember; this is called a free-recall task. Most of the people involved will remember the words at the beginning and at the end but not the ones in the middle. Atkinson and Shiffen point out, because the words at the end of the list were the last to be heard, they are still available in short-term memory. They feel that the primary and recency effects are important because they demonstrate that memory is not a random process. Information is not just plucked from the environment and stored away randomly. They say that it follows predictable patterns and is dependant on the contributions of rehearsal and short term memory.
Another theory was the working memory model (Baddeley and Hitch 1974) they believe that the working memory acts on material we just perceive and allows us to manipulate this in short term memory. It allows us to keep a telephone number ‘alive’ in the memory long enough to dial it or allow us to perform tasks. According to Baddeley working memory is a short term memory system that allows us to retain and process information correctly. He regarded short term memory as having three components which allowed us to store temporarily verbal material. The component which stores verbal material was originally called articulatory loop it is now called phonological loop. The component that allows storage is called the visuospatial scratch card and the one that organises it all is the. Central executive.
All these theories help us understand what memory is. And what the concept of memory is.