“How can you NOT remember the time you literally face planted in the first grade dance recital?” My friend always brings up the same story and I always have the same response, “I don’t know, but I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t??” I think all of us can agree that there are always instances where we can be forgetful and unaware of actions or stories from our past. So, why is that? How come I remember riding a horse in my backyard at my 5^th birthday, yet have no recollection of wiping out in front of my entire elementary school?

It all begins with the three memory processes; encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is the first step in getting information to either short or long term memory. In Penn State’s Psych 100 class, Professor John Wede defines encoding as the equivalent of “Getting information into our memory system through our senses, similar to the keyboard of a computer”. According to a published article from Memory Institute, encoding involves understanding our external lives and making connections to previous events or experience we’ve had through our senses and, “the meanings we attach, the context in which it was learned, personal relevance, repetition, and concentration.” More specifically, we can encode through visual, acoustic, or semantic experience; like seeing something that particularly catches our eye, or hearing something that grabs our attention the most. Semantic refers to association with meaning, and remembering something because of its relevance, as previously mentioned in the Memory Institute article as well. In order for things to first make it to short term, we need to GRAB it with a term otherwise known as selective attention.

Selective attention is how we get things into working (short term) memory. Selective attention is simply our ability to narrow in on detail, and focus on the most important event that is happening, that is ofcourse, atleast in our eyes. Through selective attention, information can be retained in our working, or short term, memory. Now short term memory can vary depending on person to person, but according to the Memory Institute, typically when we say short term, it means, “on average between 20 to 30 seconds and has a capacity of between 5 to 9 items. Note: if you continue to review the information in your short-term memory it will last as long as the review process continues. Short term memory is why you can dial a phone number and forget it moments later”. Have you every thought about the fact that after memorizing a cell phone number, the information practically dissipates into thin air a few seconds later? Pretty neat.

After encoding comes Storage; “The retention of information, or the disk of a computer.”(Wede). Storage is your mind’s ability to retain information you’re being thrown and later use it to your advantage. A recent article in the Human-Memory net explains the concept of storage best, in that, “Memory storage is therefore an ongoing process of reclassification resulting from continuous changes in our neural pathways, and parallel processing of information in our brains.” As learned in Wede’s lecture 10 on Storage and Retreival, our short term memory has a duration of roughly 12-30 seconds, but this can actually be altered through different mechanisms such as Maintanance Rehearsal (otherwise known as ROTE rehearsal). For instance, we can memorize a phone number for a quick instance and completely forget it within the next minute, but, if we keep going over that number however, then there is a better shot of it sticking in the long term.

Last but not least, comes Retreival. Retreival simply means recalling the information learned, and “getting it out, like a monitor screen on a computer” (Wede). As touched upon in Wede’s lecture, everyone has retrieval cues, simply the way in which we learn through our experiences and based on that, we recall information. It is important to note that, “there must be a cue that allows us into webs to retrieve the particular memory”. Specifically, emotions and moods spark these retrieval cues and “almost anything can serve as a retrieval cue” (Wede). An example of this would look at how moods plays an important role in determining what types of memories we recall. Wede uses the example of happiness, and how when we are happy or listening to upbeat music, we are more likely to recall happy memories and vice versa. It interesting to think about how moods can also play a factor in studying; Wede describes the benefits to studying throughout different days because if you are always upset while studying, but then happy when it comes time to take the test, your overall performance may drop by a slight amount. So next time, keep this in mind when you feel yourself beginning to procrastinate!

Clearly, there is a science behind memory and why we remember some things and not others. Although memory can seem to be such a random and unexplainable concept, there is actually more of a black and white answer than you’d think. Next time you find yourself at fault for not remembering what you did in a certain situation, relax, or better yet, blame your selective attention!