This final section is what sets the book apart, delving into amnesia , autobiographical memory, and the intersection of memory with the legal system, such as eyewitness testimony. Key Theories and Research Highlights

How Does Human Memory Work? - ECU Online - East Carolina University

: Discusses how we navigate our environment and sequence events.

Radvansky begins with the foundational “modal model” of memory, which posits three interacting stores. First, holds raw perceptual information for fractions of a second—an iconic image fading from your vision or an echo lingering in your ears. This buffer allows the brain to decide what merits further processing. From there, information moves to short-term memory (STM) , or what Radvansky and others now call working memory (WM) . Unlike a passive container, working memory is an active workspace where conscious manipulation occurs. Radvansky highlights the classic finding that WM is limited to roughly seven items (plus or minus two), but more critically, it is constrained by attention: we can only maintain and process a few chunks of information before decay or interference sets in.