The human memory includes mental representation of our knowledge of the world, how we access that knowledge, why we fail to access it, and how we integrate new information. Memory organization and psychological and neural aspects are included, as is the memory system in normal and pathological aging (Klatzky, 1980).
The human memory can be viewed as an information processing system which is divided into three storage structures which correspond to a stage of processing stimulus. Sensory register, (registers for the five senses, visual, hearing, touch, smell, and taste; vision and hearing registers have been studied the most) is the name of the site of registration of initial stimulus presentation; pattern recognition or naming, is a process that now takes place, contact is made between the information in the sensory register and previously acquired knowledge. The stimulus is now encoded so that it can be passed to the next stage, short-term memory (STM). An item in the visual register decays in a second; items are now maintained by a holding process called rehearsal, which renews the material so decay is never complete; without rehearsal, the information is lost in STM. In STM, only a few stimuli can be held simultaneously; it has room for about seven items, called the memory span. The loss of additional information is one type of forgetting. The third storage structure is long-term memory (LTM), a permanent storehouse for knowledge. Processing takes place in two ways; first, the recognized stimulus, entering the STM may be retained more permanently through LTM storage, and second, LTM knowledge is important for the initial recognition of the stimulus (Klatzky, 1980).
The duplex theory, divides memory, after the initial stimulus registration, into two stores. An alternative model, called, the levels-of-processing theory, attempts to integrate findings across several areas of memory; it isolates different stages or leve...