In psychology, memory is an organism’s mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
humans are believed to have 3 forms of memory Sensory, Short term and Long term.
Sensory Memory:-
is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased. It refers to items detected by the sensory receptors which are retained temporarily in the sensory registers and which have a large capacity for unprocessed information but are only able to hold accurate images of sensory information momentarily. Sensory memory is still considered to operate within this approximate time frame (under 1 second and no more than 2) and so is very short lived. It is also characterized by being outside of conscious control (i.e. it happens automatically).
Short-term Memory:-
sometimes referred to as “primary memory” or “active memory” refers to the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory (when rehearsal is prevented) is assumed to be in the order of seconds. Estimates of the capacity of short-term memory vary – from about 3 or 4 elements (i.e., words, digits, or letters) to about 9 elements. A commonly-cited capacity is 7 +/- 2 elements.
“The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” is a 1956 paper by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology. In it Miller showed a number of remarkable coincidences between the channel capacity of a number of human cognitive and perceptual tasks. In each case, the effective channel capacity is equivalent to between 5 and 9 equally-weighted error-less choices: on average, about 2.5 bits of information. Miller did not draw any firm conclusions, simply hypothesizing that the recurring sevens might represent something deep and profound or be just a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.
Long-Term Memory:-
is memory that can last as little as a few days or as long as decades (Jacobs, 1887). It differs structurally and functionally from short-term memory, which ostensibly stores items for only around 18 seconds (Peterson and Peterson, 1959). Biologically, short-term memory is a temporary potentiation of neural connections that can become long-term memory through the process of rehearsal and meaningful association. Much is not known about the underlying biological mechanisms of long-term memory, but the process of long-term potentiation, which involves a physical change in the structure of neurons, has been proposed as the mechanism by which short-term memories move into long-term storage. Notably, the time scale involved at each level of memory processing remains under investigation.
As long-term memory is subject to fading in the natural forgetting process, several recalls/retrievals of memory may be needed for long-term memories to last for years, dependent also on the depth of processing. Individual retrievals can take place in increasing intervals in accordance with the principle of spaced repetition. This can happen quite naturally through reflection or deliberate recall (a.k.a. recapitulation or recollection), often dependent on the perceived importance of the material.
Original idea:
my original idea was to create a photographic sequence of the effects of alcohol on a persons memory the photos would follow a subject on a night out. Begining with the subject getting ready and starting drink, through the various locations that they vist whilst consuming alcohol continuing to the subjects arriving home and concluding the next day when the subject looks through their photographs from the night and not remembering what happened.
