Memory Alexandra Matz 21953704 April 30th 2014 Essentials of Psychology SSC130 Essay 25072400

Say you are playing a game of Disney Scene It, and to win the game comes down to one question: Who kidnapped Hercules when he was a baby? As you try to find the answer, your brain is going through many different fundamental processes that relate to your memory. The information may have never been exposed as to whom Hercules kidnappers were. However if you have been exposed to such information it may not have registered in your brain as meaningful. This could mean that the information might have been mis-recorded in your memory. The first initial process of recording information to memory is called encoding. Even if you had been exposed to the information and had originally knew the answer to the question you may be unable to recall during game play because of failure to retain that specific information. Memory specialists talk of a storage which is the maintenance of the material stored in memory. If this material is not stored correctly, a person may not be able to recall the information at a later time. Memory depends on one last particular process called retrieval. With retrieval the material in memory storages has to be located and brought to a persons awareness in order to be useful. Your inability to recall the kidnappers names, may be the inability to retrieve information, that you have previously learned. To sum it all up psychologists consider memory to be a process by which a persons brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information. Each of these parts representing a different process. These processes can be made in comparison to a computer. A keyboard representing encoding, a hard drive representing storage, and the software that accesses information and displays it on a screen which represents the retrieval processes. If all three processes have operated,