What Amnesics Can and Can Not Do

Abstract

Human memory is not of course a unitary function, and there has over the last 10 or 20 years been considerable controversy as to how many kinds of memory should be assumed. While this is still an area of lively disagreement, at least some of this is probably more terminological than conceptual. There would probably be relatively broad agreement about a preliminary analysis of memory into at least three separate domains, namely sensory memory, working memory and long-term memory. The term sensory memory refers to the brief storage of information presented to the senses which forms part of the process of perception. It seems likely that brain damage will on occasion produce deficits in these systems, but they are likely to present as perceptual rather than memory problems, and as such are beyond the scope of the present review.