Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Information Processing post 2

A child is learning how to brush his teeth.
First he watches his parents do it this is visual input into the sensory memory, but until he is old enough for his parents to teach him the steps he does not pay attention enough for it to stay in his memory. When he is old enough though his parents start to brush his teeth with him telling him the steps like putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush and rubbing up and down. At first this process is slow because each of the bits of brushing his teeth is separated so it takes up more of his working memory but as he rehearses the action of brushing his teeth more frequently the bits turn into chunks and he can start to think about other things while brushing his teeth. This transition means that the act of brushing his teeth has made it into his long-term memory.

1 comment:

  1. I'd be careful with the first part of your description. When he's watching, his working memory (and perhaps long term) are still at work. Anything in conscious thought is working memory, so there's a lot of visual and other information coming at him from all directions (some sound from the next room), but as he pays attention to the movement of one of his parents, he's consciously thinking about it, meaning it's in his working memory. If it reminds him of somethign he saw on TV that day, it may be encoded into long term memory.

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