Model Answer, Unit 3, 1.1A What is Memory?
This is a model answer and your answer might look very different.
Defining ‘memory’ is not an easy task, as it can mean so many different things. In our daily language use, it can mean something we remember, the fact that we remember things, and we even talk about things having a memory, i.e. a mattress you sleep on can ‘remember’ your body shape, and we can play a ‘memory game’ in which we have to remember the position and/or meaning of items in the game and the player who remembers most of what is required wins.
You might have first of all thought of ‘memory’ as something you remember, i.e. a happy event in your life, a specific smell that reminds you of your childhood, an image of something that is important to you. This can be defined as ‘a memory’.
You can trace the roots of the word memory: “Etymologically, the modern English word “memory” comes to us from the Middle English memorie, which in turn comes from the Anglo-French memoire or memorie, and ultimately from the Latin memoria and memor, meaning "mindful" or "remembering" (Mastin, 2018).
And then there is ‘the memory’, which is a particular functionality of the human brain, which “is our ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain. It can be thought of in general terms as the use of past experience to affect or influence current behaviour” (Mastin, 2018).
References
Mastin, Luke (2018) ‘What is Memory?’ in The Human Memory [Online]. Available at http://www.human-memory.net/intro_what.html (Accessed 19 February 2025)
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