Discussion question - Essay Example

The Concept of Sensory Memory: Iconic Memory Sensory receptors take in sensory information while the nervous system processes the sensory information. The information we receive is stored temporary in the sensory memory before it is transferred to the short-term memory. The sensory memory allows us to retain impressions after the original stimuli ends. There are three types of short-term memories, which include the Iconic memory, echoic memory and haptic memory (Anderson, 2000). Iconic memory is taken in through the visual system, and it is a neurological result of information from the environment that our eyes sense.

Iconic memory is short-lived, and the information is present in its original form for about a quarter of a second (Anderson, 2000). During my first professional baseball game, my favorite player came up to bat. It was the bottom of the ninth inning, and we had tied scores. The player swung and hit the ball high and far to the center of the court. The center fielder went back to the wall, and the ball went over the wall, out of his reach for game winning. The crowd erupted in applause. I immediately closed my eyes, and I had an immediate replay of the ball passing over the wall as if it was happening for the first time.

Therefore, the replay of the ball moving over the wall to give us an astounding victory vividly in a visual manner was because of the actions of my iconic memory.The Concept of Forgetting: Why were ForgetI support the reasoning put forward about forgetting. Forgetting can result from factors beyond our control and sometimes it can be an intentional act. My support for these two propositions is based on psychological evidence. According to Allpsych.Com (2014), there are many reasons why we forget.

Firstly, some information never reaches the long-term memory or sometimes it is lost before it fixes itself to LM. Other reasons for forgetting include decay, which implies that, information that isn’t used for a long time fades over time hence creating a notion that we are psychologically programmed to delete data that appears no more relevant to us. Sometimes the information may be there but we are unable to access it due to reasons such as distractions around us. Further, amnesia that can be psychological or physiological in origin causes forgetting.

Finally forgetting may be intentional where we subconsciously suppress some memories because we don’t want to remember the related feelings, for example, adults forgetting a rape incidence when they were children. ReferencesAllpsych.com, (2014). Memory and Forgetting in Psychology 101 at AllPsych Online. Retrieved from http://allpsych.com/psychology101/memory.htmlAnderson, J. R. (2000). Learning and memory.