Crash Course Psychology #13: How We Make Memories

Summarize Clive Wearing's amnesia case and explain how it illustrates the role of memory in daily life.

Identify the three ways memories are accessed: recall, recognition, and relearning.

Explain the Atkinson-Shiffrin model's three stages of memory formation: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Distinguish sensory, short-term, and long-term memory, including short-term memory's four-to-seven-item capacity.

Play the linked Crash Course episode in class or assign it for homework before distributing the worksheet, since every question is built around content from the video.

Use question 15 (how memory shapes relationships, using Clive Wearing as a starting point) as a discussion prompt or short written reflection, since the answer key notes responses will vary.

Assign the Word version if you want students to type answers directly into the document, or the PDF version for printed responses.

Video-based note-taking and comprehension — students extract specific facts and explanations from a psychology video to answer 15 sequential questions.

Cognitive-model application — students explain memory formation using the Atkinson-Shiffrin encoding-storage-retrieval framework.

Case-to-concept reasoning — students connect Clive Wearing's specific amnesia case to general principles of memory and its role in relationships.