models of memory
“Following the models of human memory presented by theorists, but especially that proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), it became traditional to distinguish between a number of stages of remembering and storing information. ... Memory is involved in all aspects of our lives and, although it is difficult to get a precise definition of memory, it can be thought of as the ability to retail information and demonstrate retention through behaviour. Models or theories of memory aim to explain the transfer between short-term (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) and why it doesn’t work every time. Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed the two-process model of memory, which showed how information flowed through the two stores of STM and LTM, but like many of the models, they assumed the existence of a sensory memory that proceeds the STM and so it is sometimes termed the multi-store model. ... Most sensory memory traces fade away quickly but some are maintained for a short length of time in a sensory buffer store. Visual information is retained in iconic sensory memory and auditory information in echoic sensory memory. Sperling (1960) tested iconic memory by presenting participants with arrays of letters for short periods of time (50 milliseconds).