nt remember it if it is not that important to them. The next question psychologists ask about memory is that once the information is in the memory, how does it stay there? Information stays in your memory by storage. Psychologists put a lot of time into figuring the mystery of how storage works, because its not exactly reliable. The tip of the tongue phenomenon is an example of why storage isnt reliable. Because even though you already memorized the information, it wasnt a guarantee that it was remembered. There are three ways how memory is stored and they are called sensory store, short-term store, and a long-term store. Sensory memory keeps information in brain for only a fraction of a second. Instead of actually having an actual stimulus, you would usually only receive an afterimage. Short term memory keeps information in the brain for up to twenty seconds. An example can be when someone quickly tells you a phone number and you go to dial it. By the time your conversation is over, the phone number that was in your memory before will be forgotten. Sometimes short-term memory information can remain in your brain for more then 20 seconds. Perhaps rehearsing the information will keep in it your memory longer. The rehearsal process involves thinking and verbalizing information repetitively to keep in your head. If the rehearsal process is not used, the information will decay in time. However, short-term memory can not hold that much because it has limited space. George Miller pointed out the capacity of short-term memory. Approximately seven items can be remembered at once, and eventually the earlier information will be bumped out. But putting them into chunks can increase the amount of information memorized at once. A chunk is a lot of information, but it is stored as thing to know. For example when memorizing these numbers 8, 4, 0,2, you can think of them as 84, and 02. Memorizing two numbers is easier then memorizing four. So they are ...
