Updated on Dec 23, 2009  One of the main goals of cognitive
psychology is to understand the relationship between knowledge
and learning. To do so, researchers developed the information
processing model (IPM) in the early 1950s, which has been used
as the modal model of cognition since that time. The IPM
consists of three main components, including sensory memory,
working memory, and long-term memory (Neath & Surprenant, 2003).
Sensory memory processes incoming sensory information for very
brief periods of time, usually one-half to three seconds. The
amount of information held at any given moment in sensory memory
is limited to five to seven discrete elements such as letters of
the alphabet or pictures of human faces. Working memory refers
to real-time information processing in which meaning is assigned
to incoming information from a text, pictures, or math problem.
Long-term memory refers to a permanent repository of knowledge
in memory. To use a computer analogy, sensory memory corresponds
to inputting infor