Drawing and memory skills, important aspects of development: Introduction to the memory's concept

Memory is the mental capacity to store and preserve information, concepts, ideas, experiences, etc., in the human brain through neurons, and it has an important and integral role in the cognitive development. It gives us the possibility to remember what we have retained through the time, and to learn more about it associating it with the new information that is recieved. With the previous ideas, facts or experiences that people have and remember, it is easier to understand and retain other ones. It has three phases or processes in which information goes through: codification, storage and retrieval.

People have three kinds of memory:

Sensory memory: It is the ability to store sensorial information, and it is the shortest-term element of the memory. It is percieved and retained precisely by the fifth sences through stimuli reception, but this kind of memory is very momentarily.

Short-term memory: It is the capability to collect a small amount information, about 7 items, during 10 to 15 seconds, or occasionally maximum 1 minut. During this process, the mind remembers and processes what it recieves at the same time.

Long-term memory: It is the capacity to retain information for a long period of time, although some items can be forgotten with the years, little by little.

* Short-term memory can be converted to long term memory by consolidation and association.

There are four types of long-term memory:

Declarative memory (explicit): Used for the objective information (decontextualized). For example: names, faces, dates, etc.
Semantic memory: The one we use for the general knowledge of the facts related with the world. For example: concepts. (It can be considered a subcategory of the declarative memory).
Episodic memory: Memory of the individual or personal facts or experiences of our life. For example: a trip. (It can also be included as a subcategory of the declarative memory).
Procedural memory (implicit): Memory for the motor and executive skills needed to undertake a task. It is the memory that makes us to know unconsciously how to do things, related to psychomotor abilities and skills (movements of the body), that are developed and improved practising and repeating them. For example: walking or riding a bicycle.

The long-term memories are classificated into two temporal directions:

Retrospective memory: Infromation and content about the past, experiences of past episodes that are recollected (declarative memory: semantic, empisodic and autobiographical).
Prospective memory: Information, content or actions which must or should be remembered in the future.

This information processing and the types of memory are explained in a wide and systhematic way in this audiovisual support:

The position of the different types of memory in the brain is the one of the picture:

In the educational context, different methods of memory are used to learn the concepts:

Verbal reception (passive participation)

- Reading: people remember the 10% of concepts that they read.
- Listening: people is able to remember the 20% of what they have listened.

Visual reception (passive participation)

- Whatching and seeing (pictures): it is possible to remeber the 30% of what we see.
- Both watching and listening (films, exhibitions, demonstrations): its is possible to remember the 50% of what people see and listen together.

Reception / participation (active participation)

- Dialogue (taking part in a conversation or debate): the 70% of the conversations are remembered.

Doing an action (active participation)

- Talking and doing (doing real experiencies and facts, or simulating them): the 90% of the actions in which people take part, or they simulate it, are remembered.