Storage - The Three Box Model of Memory: Study with Video Lessons, Practice Problems & Examples

Introduction to the Three Box Model

So now we're going to get into that storage piece of our information processing model, and the most famous model that we have to explain memory storage is called the 3 box model. This is basically a model for memory storage that involves three stages or kind of three different boxes of memory storage. The idea here is that information will flow sequentially through each stage, so it has to move from the first stage through to the last stage, and each stage is likened to a box, basically, that will be holding onto our memories. They will be holding onto memories in slightly different ways and for different lengths of time is the idea. So just to give you a quick overview of it, we're going to go over each of these in much more detail coming up, but the idea would be that information is going to be entering your sensory memory. It will then from there flow into short term memory, something I'm sure that you've heard of before, and then from short term memory it would flow into long term memory, which I'm sure you've also heard of.

You can see how we are flowing sequentially through each stage, and you can see we do have an arrow going in reverse here from long term memory to short term memory. That is basically representing the retrieval piece of our information processing model. Alright, so that is the 3 box model kind of in a nutshell, and I'll see you in our next video to start going over each of these in more detail. Bye bye.

Sensory Memory

Alright, so sensory memory is going to be that stage of storage that's dealing with incoming sensory input. So this could be visual information, auditory, olfactory, taste, etcetera. Information is usually held in sensory memory in this little box for a very, very short amount of time. On average, it's going to be retained for less than a few seconds. And we do see that different sensory modalities tend to be retained for different amounts of time. For example, visual stimuli tend to be retained for about half a second; it's very, very brief.

Auditory stimuli tend to be retained the longest. Humans will often retain auditory stimuli for less than 10 seconds. So we tend to, on average, retain auditory stimuli the longest, but that is just an average. So what is happening here is that we have our incoming sensory input, again that can be from any sensory modality, and that is entering sensory memory where on average it's going to hang out for less than a few seconds. The way that we are going to move information from sensory memory into short-term memory is just by paying attention to it.

So if you are attending to or noticing that information, it's going to get sent into short-term memory. If you are not attending to or noticing that information, it's going to get lost, basically immediately. Okay? And this is actually a really important feature of the human brain because think about how much sensory information is coming into you at any given moment. Right?

The feeling of your clothing, the ticking of a clock, the temperature of the room that you're in, and the smell of the room that you're in. If you are aware of all of those things every second of every day, that would be really overwhelming. Right? And it would take up a ton of cognitive processing space, and we don't really want that. Right?

So by basically forgetting most of this information immediately, we're actually kind of opening up space and reducing cognitive load. Alright? So any information that we are paying attention to is going to go into short-term memory, and we will be talking about short-term memory in our next video. So I will see you there.

Storage - The Three Box Model of Memory Example 1

Okay, so this one asks us, sensory memory holds on to information for an incredibly short period of time. Why is this advantageous? It holds on to information for a short amount of time and basically immediately boots it out and makes you forget about it if it is not relevant to you. That is advantageous for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is going to reduce sensory overload.

Right? I mean, imagine if you were aware of every single sensation, every single second of every single day. That would be really overwhelming. Right? You would never be able to get anything done.

So by holding it for that very tiny amount of time and then immediately getting rid of it, you are reducing sensory overload. And by doing that, you are also going to be reducing cognitive load. Because if we forget about that information and we don't have to think about it, we have a lot more space to do all the cognitive processing that we need to do. If your brain is keeping all that information and pushing it forward and making you think about it more consciously, then you're not going to have space to be doing all of the other important functions that you need to get done during the day. Right?

So by holding information in sensory memory for a very short amount of time before, you know, basically booting out any irrelevant information, we are reducing potential sensory overload and we are reducing potential cognitive load. And there you go.

Which of the following statements about sensory memory are true?

I) Irrelevant stimuli are forgotten virtually immediately. 

II) Auditory stimuli are generally retained for longer than visual stimuli. 

III) Information that you pay attention to moves to short-term memory.

• A.  I & II.
• B. I & III.
• C. II & III.
• D. I, II, & III.

Short-Term And Working Memory

Okay, so in this video we're going to be going over short-term memory and working memory, and these are distinct but related ideas. So short-term memory is basically the temporary storage that is going to be holding information for about 15 to 30 seconds approximately, and then working memory is the active manipulation of information that is in short-term memory. So I want you to think about short-term memory as kind of like the box that's actually holding all the information and then working memory is your ability to actively think about and use and manipulate the information that is in that box is kind of the distinction between the two of those. Now both short-term memory and working memory are limited in how much information they can hold and work with at any given time. Now historically this number was believed to be 7 items plus or minus 2, and this came from a very famous study with George Miller in 1965.

You might remember George Miller from chapter 1. He is one of our founders of cognitive psychology. And this finding kind of blew up. It became very, very famous and people kind of confirmed it with biases after the fact. Like, oh yeah, you know, phone numbers are seven numbers, it all makes sense now, and it went unchallenged for many, many years until Cowen and colleagues did a study in 2010 and they found that short-term memory capacity was much closer to 4 items plus or minus 1, and those numbers have been replicated since.

So this seems like a more accurate representation of what short-term memory capacity probably is, but historically we did believe that it was 7 plus or minus 2. Now do keep in mind that this 4 plus or minus 1 is a little bit flexible and we're going to talk about that in our next video, so stick around for that. So for thinking about kind of our little flowchart through our 3 box model, just as a reminder we have incoming sensory input going into sensory memory very briefly for, like, less than a few seconds, and then any information that we pay attention to will go into short-term memory where it will be stored for 15 to 30 seconds, potentially worked with and manipulated using working memory during that time. And then any information that we need to move from short-term to long-term memory will undergo the process of encoding. Okay, so encoding is how we get information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

And then within short-term memory, any information that is not going to get encoded or that you're not actively rehearsing and using over and over is going to get lost, again, pretty quickly. It's only going to be for about 30 seconds. Alright, so that is short-term and working memory, and like I mentioned in our next video we're going to go over the capacity of short-term and working memory in a bit more detail, so I will see you there.

Storage - The Three Box Model of Memory Example 2

Okay, so this one reads, the terms short-term memory and working memory are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are distinct concepts. Briefly explain the difference between the two of them. So remember, short-term memory is going to basically just be one of those boxes from our three-box model, right? It basically allows for the storage of information. It's just holding on to it.

It's just a box, think of it that way. And then working memory allows you to actually work with the information. So it is the active use of information that is stored in short-term memory. Alright? So think of it that way.

Short-term memory is the box. Working memory allows you to work with or actively use and manipulate the information that is hanging out in that box. Alright, there you have it, and I'll see you in our next one. Bye-bye.

True or False: if false, choose the answer that best corrects the statement. 

Short-term memory is the first step in the three-box model.

• A. True.
• B. False, short-term memory is the second step in the three-box model.
• C. False, short-term memory is the third step in the three-box model.
• D. False, short-term memory is part of the first and third steps of the three-box model.

Short-Term and Working Memory Capacity

In this video, we're going to talk about a few strategies that can be used to increase short-term memory and working memory capacity. The first of these is very simple; it's just rehearsal, which is the mental repetition of information to basically keep it active in short-term memory. So if you've ever met somebody at a party and you just think to yourself, okay Amy, Amy, her name is Amy, don't forget her name is Amy, you are rehearsing that information. Rehearsal is actually partially responsible for a really cool effect that we see in psychology known as the serial position effect, and this is the tendency for people to recall the first and last items on a list more so than the items in the middle. For example, if I was to read a list of planets to you, I'm sure that you know your planets but just as an example, you would have an easier time remembering the first few planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and that is known as a primacy effect.

Prime, just referring to, like, the first of something. This primacy effect happens because of rehearsal. Because you heard those first, you just have more time to mentally rehearse them. So the entire time that I'm going to be reading that list, you can just keep saying Mercury, Venus, Earth over and over in your head. That rehearsal is actually why you end up forgetting the items in the middle.

Because you're so busy trying to keep those first few items active in your short-term memory, as these new items in the middle begin entering it there is just no space for them and so they basically get forgotten very, very quickly. Now, when you remember the last item on a list we call that the recency effect, and we see it just because quite literally that item most recently popped into your short-term memory. Basically, it just hasn't had time to be forgotten yet. So if I finish reading this list and then said, okay, say it all back to me this one is just still in short-term memory because it just got there, and these are there because you have been rehearsing them the whole time, and these probably got lost somewhere along the way. So that is why we see that serial position effect.

Now one other strategy that we can use to increase our capacity is known as chunking. Chunking is basically grouping pieces of information together into a single meaningful unit. For example, I would bet that you read this as 2020 and it's just a year in your head. Right? If I asked you to read this you probably wouldn't say 20, 20, right? You don't read that as four discrete pieces of information, you read that as one single chunk.

That is a chunk. Now when I was talking about our short-term memory capacity being 4 plus or minus 1 you might have been thinking, like, that sounds really low, and it does, but that's because that capacity actually refers to chunks. Our short-term memory capacity is 4 plus or minus 1 chunks, not discrete pieces of information, and chunks can actually be a little bit bigger than you might be thinking. Now these strategies can be applied both consciously or unconsciously. You probably never had to, like, sit yourself down and say, okay, like, 2020 is going to be a chunk from now on.

Like, you never had to do that. Your brain just automatically did that for you. Right? But you can purposefully employ these strategies, things like rehearsing a person's name. If you have to remember a verification code, you might purposefully kind of chunk it into smaller units to help you remember it.

We can do these consciously or unconsciously. Now, there are a few additional factors to consider when we are thinking about short-term and working memory capacity because this can be very variable. One thing to note is that expertise in a subject will often increase capacity as well as attention or interest. That is usually going to increase capacity as well. So if you are really focused, really paying attention, you probably going to have a bit of a higher capacity on average.

And then things like physical discomfort, such as being hungry, tired, or stressed, on average that is going to decrease capacity, and that is true really for most cognitive processes. Alright, so those are some ways that we can increase our short-term and working memory capacity and I will see you guys in our next video. Bye bye!

Storage - The Three Box Model of Memory Example 3

All right, so for this one, for each situation here, we're going to determine what strategy is being used to improve working memory, and if no strategy is being used, we'll just write "na". So our first one reads, Ed memorizes a verification account by breaking it into three 2-digit numbers instead of six 1-digit numbers. So that would be an example of chunking, right? He's basically chunking the information together, remembering 23 as 1 chunk, remembering 23 as 2 individual pieces of information, right? So Ed is using chunking, and that is something that our brain can do, kind of unconsciously, but we can also consciously and purposefully apply that strategy as well.

B reads that Joanne notices a blue jay as she is walking to the bus stop. It looks like nothing is really happening there. Right? She's not trying to remember the bluejay or anything, so I think that would be an "na". That is not applicable.

And then C says, while walking to her dorm, Emoni mentally repeats a list of four items that she needs to put in her bag when she gets home. So if she is mentally repeating that list, she is rehearsing it, right? So that would be an example of rehearsal, where she is keeping that information in mind by just saying it over and over. Alright, so there we have it, and I will see you in our next one. Bye-bye.

Which of the following is NOT true of short-term memory?

• A. Commonly impacted by the serial position effect.
• B. It can hold a limited amount of information.
• C. Typically holds information for a short length of time.
• D. Can only process visual stimuli.

Long-Term Memory

All right. So now we're going to get into long-term memory, which is essentially the storage of encoded information over long periods of time. That could be hours, days, weeks, years, pretty much the entire human lifespan, even. You can have a person who's 100 years old who has memories of being 4 or 5. So it can last as long as the entire human lifespan.

And we believe that it has a near-limitless capacity. It's almost impossible to actually measure the capacity of long-term memory, but it seems to be almost infinite. We divide long-term memory into 2 categories. First, we have implicit memory, which essentially influences our thoughts and behaviors without our conscious awareness.

You are basically not consciously aware of when you get these memories or really how they are encoded, but despite the fact that they are unconscious, they can still influence our thoughts and behaviors. This is sometimes called non-declarative memory because, essentially, you can't declare it; it's unconscious. Now, in contrast, we also have explicit memory, which are memories that we can consciously retrieve. These are sometimes called declarative memories because you can declare them; they are conscious.

Now, both implicit and explicit memories have a few subtypes, and we'll talk about those in just one second. First, we're going to look at our little flowchart here really quick. Just as a reminder, to get information from short-term memory into long-term memory, we have to encode it, and then we can also have this retrieval aspect where we can basically pull information from long-term memory and bring it into our conscious awareness, where we think about it and manipulate it, and that is called retrieval. That's our third step in our information processing model. We'll talk about that a bit later in the chapter.

So here we have our 2 types of long-term memory: implicit and explicit, and like I said, each of these has a few subtypes. For implicit memory, we have conditioned responses, which are any responses that you may have learned through rewards, punishments, or classical conditioning. Under implicit memory, we also have procedural memory, which is essentially your memory or knowledge of how to do things, such as riding a bike or driving a car, which are usually procedural.

They're often very unconscious. You don't have to think about doing those things. Now, I do want to be clear because you might be thinking, "Well, I could consciously explain to somebody how to ride a bike." And that's true, there are aspects of those memories that could be explicit, that you can consciously retrieve.

But I would bet if you got on a bike you wouldn't have to consciously think about how to balance yourself or the exact angle to turn the handlebars. That would happen unconsciously, and that is what would make it a procedural memory. We also, under implicit memory, have priming. Priming is basically an enhanced ability to think about a stimulus due to earlier exposure to it.

For example, if you are scrolling through your favorite social media app and you keep getting ads for fast food, and then a few hours later in the day you think, "I really, really want fast food," you were primed to think about that by those ads, so that's how priming works. It usually happens unconsciously. Now, moving on to explicit memory, we have 2 types. The first are called episodic memories, which are events or episodes that you have personally experienced.

So if you can remember your favorite birthday party as a child or your high school graduation, those are episodic memories, things that actually happened to you. And then we also have semantic memory, which is your factual knowledge about the world. So if you know the capital of France or the largest river in North America, all of that is your semantic memory. All right. So that is long-term memory, and those are all the different types of long-term memory, and I will see you guys in our next one to talk about how we actually organize all of this information.

Bye bye.

Storage - The Three Box Model of Memory Example 4

Alright, so for this example we're going to be looking at these situations and basically deciding what type of explicit memory they are, so if they are episodic or semantic. So the first one is remembering your 12th birthday. That is an event that happened to you or an episode in your life. Right? So that would be an episodic memory.

B is knowing the quadratic formula. I know that got grilled into me in ninth grade, and that is factual knowledge. So that would be under our semantic memory. C is memories of your childhood dog. That, again, is something that happened to you personally, so that would be an episodic memory.

D is knowing the main character of Pride and Prejudice, good old Lizzie Bennet. Right? And that is a fact. The actual main character of that book would be factual information, so that would fall under semantic memory. It is important to note that you could have episodic memories of reading Pride and Prejudice.

The memories of you reading it and how you felt about it would be episodic but your factual knowledge about that book would be considered semantic memories. Just kind of a little distinction there. And then, E, we have the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, something that I think everyone who goes through the US education system has memorized. Right? And that is factual, so that would go under our semantic memory.

Alright. So there you guys have it, and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye.

Which of the following is NOT a type of implicit memory?

• A. Classical Conditioning. 
• B. Episodic Memory.
• C. Priming.
• D. Procedural Memory.

Which of the following terms are matched correctly?

• A. Implicit memory: unconscious. 
• B. Semantic memory: unconscious.
• C. Episodic memory: unconscious.
• D. Nondeclarative memory: conscious.

Organization of Long-Term Memory

This video we're just going to quickly talk about the organization of long-term memory because if this thing has nearly infinite capacity, we have to keep it pretty organized, right? And we believe that long-term memory is organized using something called associative networks. You might also see these called semantic networks; those two terms refer to the exact same thing. So associative networks are these networks consisting of nodes that represent interrelated concepts. So the idea behind these is that the more frequently you are associating these concepts, or these nodes, the stronger the link between them is going to be.

And over time, activating one node is going to make related nodes easier to retrieve. So that sounds a bit fancy, but really, if you've ever played that game where somebody says a word and you say the first word that pops into your mind, the whole point of that game is to activate associative networks. So if I say peanut butter and you think about jelly, we just activated an associative network in your brain. Peanut butter and jelly are concepts that tend to be very interrelated in American culture. They get very frequently associated, and so they have a very strong link between them, which means that activating one of those nodes, like peanut butter, makes the related nodes easier to retrieve, like jelly.

Now associative networks are unique to each individual because we all have unique experiences, we make unique associations. However, like we just demonstrated, we do tend to see some overlap with common factual and cultural information. So to give you another example, if I was to say cow to you, you might think about milk. Right? A lot of us relate via concepts of cow and milk.

But then if you think about milk, you might also think about cheese and eggs. Right? You might think about dairy products just kind of in general. All of these are interrelated nodes that get associated very frequently. You might have also thought about a farm.

And when you think about a farm, it might be easier for you to start thinking about concepts like pigs and sheep and chickens, and then chickens are also related to eggs, and everything kind of ties together. Right? So each of these is a node, and all of these nodes have these links or these associations between them, and those links are going to be stronger the more frequently you are relating those nodes to each other. Alright. So that is the organization of long-term memory, and I will see you guys in our next video.

Bye bye.

True or False: if false, choose the answer that best corrects the statement. 

In associative networks, activating a node makes it more difficult to access related nodes.

• A. True.
• B. False: In associative networks, activating a node does not impact related nodes at all.
• C. False: In associative networks, activating a node makes it easier to access related nodes.
• D. False: In associative networks, activating a node makes it easier to access unrelated nodes and concepts.