Encoding involves forming or creating a memory trace, storage involves maintaining encoded information in memory over time, retrieval involves recovering information from memory storage. For information to be encoded, it has to be attended to.
Attentional processes are very important.
Competition for your attention by environmental stimuli is intense. Some selectivity in attention is necessary for memory to function. Using a variety of monaural and binaural listening tasks, messages separated at the stage of sensory reception are more easily selected for attention. Late selection models assume all information is analyzed for meaning and only relevant information selected for memory storage. Early selection models that only relevant information is selected for later processing.