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Training and Development System

Notes 6.2.3 Human Learning and Memory

 Modern work on human learning and memory focuses on the cognitive processes people
use in storing and retrieving information.

 One information-processing model considers memory to be divided into several stages:
the sensory register, the short-term store with its rehearsal buffer, and the long-term
store. (See Figure 6.1)
Figure 6.1: An Information-processing Model of Memory

Memory output

A,A’,A”, etc
B,B’,B”, etc
Retrieval
Sensory
Sensory
register Rehearsal B,B’,C”, etc
input Etc.
buffer
Storage Etc.
Etc.
SHORT-TERM
STORE
(Holds only a few items.) LONG-TERM STORE
(Holds a tremendous
amount of information
in organized categories.)

Source: Introduction to Psychology, Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 1979 (P. 149)
 Information is held for a few seconds in the sensory systems themselves. This storage
function of the sensory channels is called the sensory register.

 The short-term store holds information for up to about 30 seconds. It can hold no more
than approximately seven items of information. Because the capacity of the short-term
store is limited, new information coming into it displaces items already there.

 One kind of rehearsal, in which items in the short-term store are simply repeated over and
over, is called maintenance rehearsal. Rehearsal leads to the transfer of information to the
long-term store.
 Information in the long-term store is held for days months, years, or a lifetime. The
capacity of the long-term store has no known limit.
 Information is processed to varying depths. The first depth is that of perception; at the next
deeper level, the structural features of the input are analyzed; at the deepest level, the
meaning of the input is analysed.
 Long-term memory is described as involving the following processes: (a) encoding and
storage of information, (b) organisation of information, and (c) retrieval of information.
These long-term memory process are interrelated.
 One factor involved in the encoding and storage of information is the organisation of the
to-be-remembered material. The encoding specificity principle says that retrieval cues are
effective only if they are stored along with the to-be-remembered information.

 The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon indicates that information is organised in long-
term memory.

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