Where does encoding collide?

In the study of human memory, encoding is the initial process by which a perceived event is transformed into a stored trace that can later be retrieved: what gets encoded, and how well, sets what can be remembered. Tulving and Thomson's 1973 Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory argued that the way information is registered at the moment of learning fixes the conditions under which it can later be recovered, so memory is a joint product of encoding and the cues present at recall. The referent here is a mental operation inside a rememberer, judged by later recall, and it is not a code chosen for a wire, a firing pattern in a neuron, or a meaning packed into a broadcast.[1]

Unit

One encoded memory trace, formed as an event is registered for later recall

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Operationalised by later recall or recognition for material studied under controlled encoding conditions

In information theory and computer science, encoding is the mapping of information into a code for efficient or reliable storage and transmission: source coding compresses a message toward its information content, and channel coding adds structured redundancy so that errors can be detected or corrected. Shannon's 1948 A Mathematical Theory of Communication founded the field and proved limits on how compactly a source can be encoded and how reliably a noisy channel can carry it. The referent is a formal transformation of symbols, scaled in bits, and it has nothing to do with laying down a memory, a neuron's spikes, or a broadcaster's intended message.[2]

Unit

A codeword or bit string that represents a message for storage or transmission

Recovery means

Decoding inverts the mapping, and channel coding lets the original message be recovered despite noise

Measured by

Quantified in bits, by code rate, compression ratio, and error rates before and after decoding

In neuroscience, neural encoding is how the nervous system represents a stimulus in patterns of neural activity: features of the world are turned into the rates and timings of nerve impulses, so that a train of spikes stands for a smell, a sound, or a touch. Adrian's 1926 The impulses produced by sensory nerve endings showed that a sensory fibre signals the strength of a stimulus by the frequency of its all-or-none impulses, the first clear evidence of a neural code. The referent is a physical firing pattern in living tissue, read off by recording spikes, and it differs from a memory formed in the mind, a codeword sent down a channel, or a meaning built into a media text.[3]

Unit

A pattern of nerve impulses, in firing rate and spike timing, that stands for a stimulus

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Recorded by electrodes as spike trains and related to stimuli through tuning curves and decoding analyses

In cultural and media studies, encoding is the work a producer does to build a preferred meaning into a media message, which audiences then decode, sometimes in the intended way and sometimes against it. Stuart Hall's 1980 Encoding/decoding argued that a television programme is a meaningful discourse encoded under one set of institutional and ideological conditions and decoded under another, so the received meaning is never guaranteed by the sender and can be read in dominant, negotiated, or oppositional ways. The referent is a social and interpretive practice around a text, described by the meanings people make of it, not a memory trace, a formal code of bits, or a firing pattern in a nerve.[4]

Unit

One act of building a preferred meaning into a media message

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied through audience reception research and close reading of how texts are produced and interpreted