Thursday, March 10, 2011

Three Layers of Memory

There are three layers of memory:

a core focusing on one active item, a surrounding area holding at least three more active items, and a wider region containing passive items that have been tagged for later retrieval or "put on the back burner."
What does this imply for reading? It is known that while we are focusing on one word, we are also peripherally aware of the words on either side. Is this part of the same process? And what about the elements that have been tagged? What sorts of things do our memories tag? How might that affect the structure of sentences, or word patterns?

An author of the original study also notes that

"Predictability can free up resources so a person can effectively multitask"
May this be one of the uses of rhythm and rhyme in poetry?

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