Psychological Concept - Essay Example

When particular information needs to be recalled, it moves from the LTM to the STM. Experiments have been conducted to determine various aspects of data entry into the STM and retrieval. I am often faced with a problem of studying material for various courses and not being able to remember them later. If I try to memorize them by repeatedly reading them, I tend to remember more of the material. But this lasts only for a short while. After that, though I may be able to remember few names or scattered details, I am often unable to recollect the matter in its entirety or with a meaningful connection between the various facets.

But there are some concepts that I have only heard of from someone, and I am able to recollect them and relate them to various things that I do or study. I have often wondered why this is so. Also, I tend to remember concepts and material in abstract rather than in concrete terms. I do not like memorizing dates, figures etc. Also I find almost impossible to study when there is any noise; however much I try, the distraction and outside interference inhibits my ability to concentrate on my studies.

SECTION 2The Atkinson-Shiffrin model is an information processing theory. It deals with a hierarchy of memory stores and possible organisations of the elements of memory. Further, it puts forward postulations about the flow of information between these two elements. A major contribution has been that the paths along which information is transmitted are procedural, and not anatomical. They suggest that information is passively transmitted from the sensory icon to the short term store. The phonemic and geometric information in STM is encoded as symbolic representations in the LTM rather than isomorphically.

The STM is emphasized as the single interface between the subject and the external environment. Thus, information enters the LTM only through the STM and retrieval requires decoding and restoration into STM from LTM. According to Atkinson and Shiffrin, the LTM is capable of only highly specialized and limited interactions with the environment. It retrieves information by 'associative' recall procedures that depend upon the content of the stored information. This can be understood as a unique information processing capability of the LTM.

As a direct function of the time employed, 'rehearsal' enables effective transference of items from STM to LTM. This model fails to explain the transference of material from STM to LTM regardless of rehearsal. The significance of the importance of the nature of the information is overlooked here. Thus, material that is meaningful to an individual may be recalled without rehearsal whereas on the other hand, meaningless information, in spite of repeated rehearsal may fail to be retrieved from the LTM.

I would like to come back to this point in section three, allot greater priority to the role of 'association' and the semantic content of new information.Experiments have been conducted to determine various aspects of data entry into the STM and retrieval. The interference theory states that with a finite capacity, short term memories could last indefinitely or until the presence of another representation. The forming of non-target representation will interfere in the ability to remember a target representation.

Atkinson and Shiffrin suggests under this theory that as one representation is registered the next that comes along bumps the first representation out of short-term storage. Waugh and Norman (1965, pgs. 82 - 104) conducted an experiment called the Problem Digit Procedure wherein they presented a series of numbers and presented a tone after the final number in the series. Participants were asked to recall