The sensory store and short-term memory

Overview

The short-term sensory store's capacity, duration and encoding, what leaves it, short-term memory's capacity, duration and encoding, chunking with a sporting example, experts and beginners, coaching instructions and displacement.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the short-term sensory store?

   Model answer

   The short-term sensory store holds all incoming information from the senses very briefly. Each sense has its own store.

2. 2

   What is the capacity of the short-term sensory store?

   Model answer

   The short-term sensory store has a very large capacity. The store takes in almost everything the senses detect.

3. 3

   How long does information last in the short-term sensory store?

   Model answer

   Information lasts only a fraction of a second, up to about one second. Unattended information is lost and replaced almost at once.

4. 4

   How is information encoded in the short-term sensory store?

   Model answer

   Information is held in its raw sensory form. A visual image stays an image and a sound stays a sound.

5. 5

   What decides which information leaves the sensory store?

   Model answer

   Selective attention picks out the relevant information and passes it to short-term memory. The rest decays.

6. 6

   Why is the brief duration of the sensory store useful?

   Model answer

   The brief duration stops the system filling with irrelevant information. Only attended information is kept for processing.

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