Memory

The three processes involved in memory are encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Short-term memory has a limited capacity of about seven plus or minus two pieces of information. Chunking allows people to combine many small pieces of information into fewer, bigger pieces of information. As long as people have fewer than about nine chunks of information, they will probably be able to hold that information in short-term memory.

Retrieval cues that can be used to get information out of memory are associations, context, and mood.

Forgetting and retention can be measured by recall, recognition, and relearning.

Retroactive interference is the forgetting of old information when new information is learned. An example: Frank learned Spanish in high school. Since he took French 101 in college, however, he can’t remember very much of his Spanish.