Read the text: Information Processing (Part III)

When we deal with information, we do so in steps. One way to think of this is to picture the process of acquiring, retaining, and using information as an activity called information processing, which is diagrammed in Figure 1. Information comes from the outside world into the sensory registers in the human brain. This input consists of things perceived by our senses. We are not consciously aware of most of the things we perceive; we become aware of them only if we consciously direct our attention to them. When we do focus our attention on them, they are placed in our working memory.

Figure 1. A model of human information processing.

Another name for our working memory is short-term memory. Our working memory has a very limited capacity - we can attend to only about seven items at a time. Therefore, we must take one of the following actions with regard to each piece of information that comes into this short-term storage area: (1) continuously rehearse it, so that it stays there; (2) move it out of this area by shifting it to long-term memory; or (3) move it out of this area by forgetting it.

Long-term memory, as its name implies, stores information for a long time. The advantage of long-term memory is that we do not have to constantly rehearse information to keep it in storage there. In addition, there is no restrictive limit on the amount of information we can store in long-term memory. If we move information to long-term memory, it stays there for a long time - perhaps permanently! To make use of this information in long term memory, we must move it back to our working memory, using a process called retrieval.

It may be convenient to view information processing as parallel to the way in which an executive manages a business. Information comes into the business across the executive's desk - mail, phone calls, personal interactions, problems, etc. (This is like short-term memory.) Some of this information goes into the waste basket (like being forgotten), and some of it is filed (like being stored in long-term memory). In some cases, when new information arrives, the executive gets old information from a file and integrates the new information with the old before refilling it. (This is like retrieving information from long-term memory to integrate it with new information then storing the new information in long-term memory.) On other occasions the executive may dig out the information in several old files and update the files in some fashion or integrate them in some way to attack a complex problem. The business of human learning operates in much the same manner.

Figure 1 represents an imperfect model - an oversimplification of human thought processes. We all engage in information processing; but nobody - not even the greatest neurological scientist in the world - fully understands what happens when we do so. It is virtually certain that within the next twenty-five or fifty years somebody will develop a better model to explain human thinking more precisely. Nevertheless, this model does provide useful insights into how to help learners acquire and retain information. It is also important to note that the components of memory undergo considerable development as the child grows into adulthood.

Interest in information phenomena increased dramatically in the 20th century, and today they are the objects of study in a number of disciplines, including philosophy, physics, biology, linguistics, information and computer science, electronic and communications engineering, management science, and the social sciences. On the commercial side, the information service industry has become one of the newer industries worldwide. Almost all other industries—manufacturing and service—are increasingly concerned with information and its handling. The different, though often overlapping, viewpoints and phenomena of these fields lead to different (and sometimes conflicting) concepts and “definitions” of information.

Basic concepts

Interest in how information is communicated and how its carriers convey meaning has occupied, since the time of pre-Socratic philosophers, the field of inquiry called semiotics, the study of signs and sign phenomena. Signs are the irreducible elements of communication and the carriers of meaning. The American philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Charles S. Peirce is credited with having pointed out the three dimensions of signs, which are concerned with, respectively, the body or medium of the sign, the object that the sign designates, and the interpretant or interpretation of the sign. Peirce recognized that the fundamental relations of information are essentially triadic; in contrast, all relations of the physical sciences are reducible to dyadic (binary) relations. Another American philosopher, Charles W. Morris, designated these three sign dimensions syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic, the names by which they are known today.

Information processors are components of an information system, which is a class of constructs. An abstract model of an information system features four basic elements: processor, memory, receptor, and effector. The processor has several functions: (1) to carry out elementary information processes on symbolic expressions, (2) to store temporarily in the processor’s short-term memory the input and output expressions on which these processes operate and that they generate, (3) to schedule execution of these processes, and (4) to change this sequence of operations in accordance with the contents of the short-term memory. The memory stores symbolic expressions, including those that represent composite information processes, called programs. The two other components, the receptor and the effector, are input and output mechanisms whose functions are, respectively, to receive symbolic expressions or stimuli from the external environment for manipulation by the processor and to emit the processed structures back to the environment.

I. Answer the questions:

1. What type of memory does a human have?

2. What happens to the information when it comes into our brain?

3. When did interest in information phenomena increase?

4. Who has pointed out the three dimensions of signs?

5. What functions does the processor have?