Go to Activity 1.1
Pervasive Role of Memory in Everyday Life
Until recently, memory has been compared to a computer and defined by
an information-processing model in which information goes through three
discrete stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Additionally, Atkinson
and Shiffrin (1968) posited that information goes through three stages:
sensory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Today, researchers
have integrated this model with findings from cognitive neuroscience to
include the idea that memory has been found to be created by a collection
of systems, working interdependently. There is no one portion of the
brain solely responsible for all memory, though there are certain regions
related to specific memory subsystems.
I. The multiple systems model posits that memory is not a single,
unitary system that relies on one neuroanatomical circuit;
rather memory is made up of multiple memory systems
that can work independently of one another.
The systems include declarative memory and nondeclarative memory.
Each of these has several subsystems (described in the lessons that
follow)