What´s the Human Memory?

If you want to provide someone with a list of letters and numbers, the information will be stored in STM. This is done by rehearsal. Whether these items are expressed acoustically (read) or visually (on a sheet of paper), this is an oral process. However, primary coding schemes including long-term memory (LTM) are considered to be semantic coding (Baddeley, 1975). Information in the LTM can be encoded visually and acoustically.

In the last article, I wrote about how to design human attention. Attention is closely related to work and short term memory. However, this article focuses on the whole human memory system. There are two types of memory: short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). In terms of computer science terminology, we can think of short-term memory as RAM and long-term memory as HDD. I will explain how they work, how to design the interface to eliminate confusion, and how to reduce the cognitive effort the user must do. All of these should lead to a more user-oriented user experience.

Memory researchers often use the so-called three store model to conceptualize human memory. This model shows that memory consists of three basic stores: perception, short and long term storage, and each storage can be distinguished based on storage capacity and duration. Although long-term memory seems to have seemingly infinite capacity in the past few years, short-term memory is relatively short and limited. By grouping information into groups, it makes it easier to remember more items in a short period of time.

Human memory is thought to include mechanisms of long-term memory and short-term memory, the latter is called working memory. Although information retrieved from long - term memory has long been believed to be expressed in working memory, we lack neurological evidence and require neurometric measurements. Here we show that human electrophysiology can be used for tracking information as it is returned to working memory when retrieved from long term memory. Specifically, retrieving information from long-term memory is limited to information about simple objects, and patterns of neurophysiological activities similar to those observed when people encode new information into working memory cause.