Memory is a process that we use to acquire, store, and retrieve information. Memory is often categorised as short-term and long-term memory.
Short Term Memory
Short term memory has limited capacity and is limited in duration, however we can rehearse information to retain it in our short term memory until we use that information and then it is forgotten e.g. when someone gives us a phone number and we repeat or rehearse it until we write it down or store it in our phone and then we are able to forget it. Short term memory is important for learning, reasoning and comprehension.
Long Term Memory
This is our memory for past events and is made up of 3 important areas: episodic memory (personal experiences), semantic memory (story telling) and procedural memory (remembering how to perform a task).
Click on each stage of the memory process to reveal more information:
Following a stroke, a person’s ability to store new information is affected impacting on short-term memory and difficulties encoding, consolidating and storing new memories. Often memory for events pre-stroke is not affected, however, the person’s ability to retrieve these memories may be affected. Following a stroke, memory can be affected by the speed in which someone can process information or the capacity for storage of information which has been discussed earlier in the module in the information processing section.
Attention – Attention is at the foundation of all cognitive skills, if you are unable to attend to information you will not be able to process any information, you will not then remember anything and therefore you won’t know what to do with the information.
Encoding – Encoding is when sensory information from our environment is changed into a format to allow information to be stored in our brains as short or long term memory.
Consolidation – This is the process of repeating information to allow information in our short term memory to be transferred to our long-term memory.
Storage – This is the part of the process that allows us to transfer and keep information in our long-term memory.
Retrieval – This is the part of the process where we remember information that is stored in our long-term memory.
