Imagine your brain is like a toy box with three different parts: the sensory memory, the short-term memory, and the long-term memory.
The sensory memory is where you first put your toys when you receive them - it's like the entrance hall of your brain. It stores the information you get from your senses for a very short time, just long enough for you to notice it. For example, when you see a bright light, that information goes to the sensory memory. But it only stays there for a very short amount of time, like a blink of an eye!
The short-term memory is like a table where you put your favorite toys to play with. You can only put a few toys on the table at once, and you can only play with them for a short time before they go back into the toy box. This is where you store information you want to use right now, like phone numbers or the name of your new friend. Your short-term memory can hold only a limited amount of information before it starts to forget things.
The long-term memory is like the big toy box where you keep all your toys. It's where you put all the things you want to remember for a long time, like your favorite song or your birthday. This is where you store memories that can last a lifetime!
The Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model explains how these three memory systems work together. When you want to remember something, like where you put your toy car, the information goes through your sensory memory and into your short-term memory. You can hold the information for a short amount of time while you look for your toy car. If you find it, that information goes into your long-term memory. You'll remember it for a long time, maybe even forever!
This memory model helps us understand how we learn and remember things, and how our brains work like a complex toy box. And just like with toys, it's important to keep practicing using our memories to remember important things!