Short-Term Store: The Basis for A Memory System

The model of short-term memory differs in a number of significant ways from that presented in 1968 by R. C. Atkinson and R. M. Shiffrin and the changes in the model will be justified. Detailed consideration will be given to six of the most basic issues involving short-term store: The role of sensory memory and stages of processing, selective attention, retrieval from short-term store, short-term capacity and forgetting and transfer from short- to long-term store. The most important function of Short-term storage (STS), and certainly the most commonly accepted function, is that of active control of thinking, problem solving, and general memorial processes. The chapter argues that selective attention is a phenomenon of STS; that after sensory input arrives in STS most of it is forgotten quickly, so that a search of STS must be carried out as fast as possible.