Meet Your MemoryMemory is something that cannot be seen, touched or weighed. It is thought

Meet Your Memory

Memory is something that cannot be seen, touched or weighed. It is thought to be abstract. It is a set of skills rather than an object. Neither is there a single standard for judging a good or poor memory. There are a number of different ways in which a person may have a 'good' memory.

Memory is generally viewed as consisting of three stages; (1) acquisition refers to learning the material; (2) storage refers to keeping the material in the brain until it is needed; and (3) retrieval(提取) refers to getting the material back out when it is needed.

Memory consists of at least two different processes: short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory has a limited capacity and a rapid forgetting rate. Its capacity can be increased by chunking(组成大块), or grouping separate bits of information into larger chunks. Long-term memory has an almost unlimited capacity.

One measure of memory is recall, which requires you to produce information by searching the memory for it. In aided recall, you are given cues(提示) to help you produce the information. In free-recall learning you recall the material in any order; in serial learning you recall it in the order it was presented; and in paired-associate learning you learn pairs of words so that when the first word is given you can recall the second word. A second measure of memory is recognition, in which you do not have to produce the information from memory, but must be able to identify it when it is presented to you. In a third measure of memory, relearning, the difference between how long it took to learn the material the first time and how long it takes to learn it again indicates how much you remember. Relearning is generally a more sensitive measure of memory than is recognition because relearning shows retention(保持) while recognition does not. Recognition is generally a more sensitive measure than recall.

A. Why do we forget things？

B. How do we measure memory？

C. What are the stages memory consists of？

D. What is the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory？

E. What is memory？

F. Who may have a poor memory？

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