The analysis of human memory spans as far as 2000 years ago to Aristotle 's efforts to comprehend memory in his thesis "De Memoria" (Bloch, 2014). Following Aristotle, many advancements have been made in the knowledge of the human memory, and in 1878 the first scientific approach to studying memory was developed by Herman Ebbinghaus (Nadel & Nadel, 2005). Ebbinghaus categorised the three individual types of memory as sensory, long-term and short-term. (Ebbinghaus, 2013). Following on from Ebbinghaus ' ideology, Miller began to research short-term memory. Miller 's theory is that short-term memory can hold seven plus or minus two items of information at any one time. (Miller, 1956). Miller alleged that short-term memory could hold seven plus or minus two items because it only had an available number of "slots" in which items could be retained. An integral focus of ‘The Magical Number Seven ' article authored by Miller (1956) was the ability to increase the current storage capacity through the use of "chunking" items. Miller did not stipulate the amount of information that can be held in each slot or the period of time each slot holds on to items. Atkinson and Shiffrin (1971) declared that the period of short-term memory appears to be between 15 and 30 seconds. …show more content…
Items can be held in short-term memory by reciting them verbally (acoustic encoding), which is a process recognised as rehearsal. (Baddeley, Eysenck, & Anderson, 2009). By means of a procedure called the Brown-Peterson technique (Brown, 1958) (Peterson & Peterson, 1959), which inhibits the probability of retrieval by having participants count backwards in threes, Peterson and Peterson (1959) revealed that the lengthier the delay, the lesser amount of information is recalled. The prompt loss of information from memory when rehearsal is averted is taken as a suggestion that short-term memory holds a restricted duration. The way people memorise information is varied; one way is by associating the information with something familiar to oneself. Information appears to adhere better within our memory if we associate it to information that is already in attendance. We use associations to help us recall, which is demonstrated by research, exhibiting that there are associative effects in serial recall and the significance of inter-item associative mechanisms (Hulme, Stuart, Brown, & Morin, 2003). In addition, it is shown that changing context is extremely important. …show more content…
If something has a context, then we can connect it to something in our memory and recognise it. Thus, context is important for recognition memory (Craik & Schloerscheidt, 2011).
While we use associations between words and from our long-term memory, there is evidence that images can help us make a strong association between what we are trying to remember and what we already have in our mind. Studies show that item properties such as word frequency and the amount of imageability of the items improved cued recall (Madan, Glaholt, & Caplan, 2010). However, there is evidence to show that images do not help with immediate serial recall but actually hinder memory (Madigan, McCabe, & Itatani, 1972).
That is why it is important that the effects of images must be limited to an immediate free recall of words. In this arena, it is shown that images aid in memory. In studies of memory and word pairs, it has been shown that imagery is a large factor aiding memory and especially when one of the word pairs was concrete and easily evoked images (Paivio &Yuille, 1969). Further studies have also shown the advantages of pictures in improving free recall.