Figure 5.1 | Three-Stage Model of Memory | Information from the physical environment enters the sensory registers through each of our senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch). This set of registers is referred to collectively as sensory memory. These registers are temporary storage places for sensory information until it can be attended to, recognized, and moved further along in the memory system. Sensory information that is not attended to is quickly forgotten. The information in each register that we attend to goes on to be recognized and enters the second stage of memory, short-term memory, which is comparable to our present awareness. Top-down processing (using information stored in long-term memory) guides this encoding of sensory input from sensory memory into short-term memory. If attended to and studied, information in short-term memory will be encoded into long-term memory where it is stored for later use. If not attended to, the information will be forgotten. To use the information stored in long-term memory, we bring it back into short-term memory (a process called retrieval). If we cannot retrieve such information, it is said to be forgotten. Later in the chapter we will consider explanations for such forgetting.