AQA GCSE Psychology

## Three processes Everything that is remembered has to go through three processes, and a failure at any one of them is a failure to remember. **Encoding** is changing information into a form that memory can hold. The same thing can be encoded in different ways: a phone number can be held as the sound of the digits, as the look of them written down, or as the meaning they carry ("Mum's number"). **Storage** is holding that encoded information over time, and it is where the different memory stores and their limits matter. **Retrieval** is getting stored information back out when it is needed, for example when a question asks for it or when a smell brings back an old holiday. Information can be stored and still be unavailable at a particular moment, which is why people say a word is "on the tip of the tongue": the memory is there and the retrieval has failed. The three are connected in order. Information that was never encoded cannot be stored, and information that was never stored cannot be retrieved, so a student who says "I never took that in" is often describing an encoding problem rather than a storage one. ## How memories are encoded and stored Information reaches memory through the senses, and what is stored differs with the store and the task. - Sound is the main code in short-term memory, which is why a list of letters that sound alike (such as B, V, P, T) is harder to hold than a list of letters that sound different. - Meaning is the main code in long-term memory. A…