Question

From another room, Amanda called out to Juan to ask where he had put the car keys. At first, Juan thought he had not heard what Amanda had asked. A second later, the question registered in his mind and he answered, "On the bedroom dresser." A type of sensory memory called _____ memory can explain this phenomenon.

Answer 1

Answer:

The best answer to fill in the blank in this question: A type of sensory memory called ____ memory can explain this phenomenon, would be: Echoic memory.

Explanation:

When we think about memory, we usually think about visual memory; we see something, our brain interprets it and saves it as a memory. However, the way that memory actually works does not only depend on the visual sense, but it also uses all the other senses. One such sense is the auditory. But unlike vision, in which the information sent to the brain is constant for memorization, in auditory memory our auditory sense will capture sounds that can be either constant, or not, and still generate memory. When we hear a sound, whatever that is, and later on we still remember it in our minds, even if we aren´t hearing it anymore, we call that echoic memory. Even if our immediate conscious mind cannot capture the sound anymore, our memory can reproduce it because of echoic memory. In the case of Juan and Amanda, this is what happened. Amanda said something, and a bit later Juan was able to produce a response, even though Amanda had sent her message earlier. Echoic memory allowed Juan to remember the sound of Amanda´s words and allowed him to form a proper response.