STM Encoding

When information arrives in sensory memory, it is still in its original form, e.g. as a visual image or sound. The sensory store has separate stores for different modalities (a modality is a particular form of sensory experience such as vision, sound or touch). Atkinson and Shiffrin envisaged STM as a unitary store, i.e. as a single storage space with no separate compartments. Psychologists have been interested in finding out what happens to the stimulus once it arrives in STM and it seems likely that it is recorded into a form…