Learning Strategies
The sensory register
The sensory register “stores the aftereffects of the stimulation of the sensory organs; it is very high in capacity but only stores information for a very short period; the information is not processed.” [1]
Are you familiar with the “soft pencil” phenomenon? If you hold a pencil between your thumb and forefinger and jiggle it from side to side it suddenly looks as if the pencil is curved. This is because you see a “shadow” where the pencil was for just a split-second (see here). How can that be?
The reason is our visual register. The receptors in our sensory organs (here: our eyes) convert the stimuli (here: the light that passes from the pencil to our eyes) into signals that can be transmitted to the brain via our nervous system.
The signals are initially unprocessed copies of environmental stimuli.
Control processes that filter the copies according to their relevance determine which copies enter our working memory for processing[2].
The visual register is just one of a number of registers grouped under the umbrella term “sensory register”. Each register refers to one of the human sensory organs. The visual and acoustic registers have been researched in the most detail to date. [3]
Fallen Ihnen noch weitere Phänomene ein, die sich auf das sensorische Register zurückführen lassen?
Haptic register: Someone pinches your arm. You continue to feel pain a short time later even though your arm is no longer being pinched.
Acoustic register: You are sitting in your bedroom reading a gripping novel. All of a sudden, your flatmate comes in and says something you initially don’t understand because you are so focused on your book. You respond with “Pardon?” but as soon as the word leaves your mouth you are able to answer your flatmate’s question without them having to repeat it. This shows that your flatmate’s question was already in your acoustic register but had not been processed by the time of your initial response.
- We receive stimuli via our sensory organs.
- The sensory register is the “forecourt” to our memory. It is here that the constant stream of stimuli we are exposed to is temporarily stored in unprocessed form.