Stages of memorisation Sample Clauses

Stages of memorisation. The other psychological distinction that will be important for us relates to the process of memory. This is another three-way partitioning, which describes the different stages in the lifecycle of an item in memory. First, an item must be encoded, i.e. entered into the memory system. (Without this, there is no memory.) Once the item has been encoded, it must be stored, maintained in the system for later usage. Finally we have that usage: the item is retrieved from storage for use. (Without this, there might be memory, but there may as well not be: it would be entirely inert.)25 25As hinted above, this clean partitioning may be an idealisation, relying on an implicit causal It is worth noting that there is nothing here specific to human memory: the three stages are equally applicable to any information-storage system, including e.g. computer memory, or even post-it notes. An important observation is the interaction between steps: the quality of the encoding step, which comes first, will naturally affect the quality of what can be retrieved (irrespective of how good the storage procedure may be) – if you write an illegible post-it note, then even if you vacuum-seal the note until it is required, the message scrawled on it can be of little use. Similarly, even if the encoding step is perfect (you write a flawless note), if the storage step is faulty (the note gets wet, or worse, burnt), then the final retrieval will of course be affected: you cannot read ashes. The three steps of encoding, storage, and retrieval, with their implied time-ordering, are taken as standard within the literature, and will be assumed in what follows.