It is a mental representation of how environmental events look, sound, feel, smell and taste. It includes a long-term component useful for such activities as recognizing a color or a familiar voice.
In sensory memory, the sensory register is a memory system that works for a very brief period of time that stores a record of information received by receptor cells until the information is selected for further processing or discarded.
As the large capacity sensory memory stores only items involved in the current event-segment, the need for event-tagging in sensory memory is eliminated, speeding up processing in active vision.
Processing information takes time, and it’s helpful to have an initial store that maintains the presented information beyond its physical duration.
This memory is especially important for a scientific understanding of consciousness, for an understanding of individual differences, and as a control in understanding conceptual aspects of memory.
Sensory memory
