In today's lecture we will briefly examine the topic of attention, some of its associated behavior and basic models, and then memory and the processes that accomplish it. The overiding issue we will be examining is what constitutes memory--what is it and what functions does it serve for us. Having looked in the last lecture at how information "gets in" (perception) we'll now consider how it is attended to and stored for use. In addition, we will be taking a much broader view of memory and what it does for us. We'll also examine a multi-store model of memory that divides it up into shorter term and longer term subparts.

The slides for today are at here.

• Basic conceptions of attention: Filter, spotlight, and capacity limitation
• Very short memories: sensory storage.
• Somewhat longer term storage: Short term memory (STM)--a fundamental bottleneck in our thinking.
• What it can hold.
• How things leave it.
• How we search for things within it.
• Another way of looking at it (STM vs Working Memory)
• The "bottleneck" issue
• Beating the bottleneck--some extreme cases!