Chapter 17 Flashcards
Who discovered the method of Loci?
Simonides–> items are associated with various locations well known to the learner
What are the advantages & disadvantages of method of loci?
- Easy to use with concrete words but not so much with abstract ones
- Very effective for retention during lecture-style presentations
- Use of imagery can be prevented during spatial tasks (e.g driving)
- Susceptible to proactive interference, especially when the same stimulus is associated with different responses (same location, different items)
- Most effective when based on a route to work because locations are more accessible
- Hard to recall item without going through the whole list in sequence
- Not very useful in everyday life
What are the advantages & disadvantages of the pegword system?
- Able to recall items in the correct order even if they are completely unrelated
- Requires extensive training to have reliable & rapid access to pegwords
- Abstract material is hard to associate with pegs
What are the advantages & disadvantages of the visual imagery mnemonic for learning names?
Improves name recall by 80% in laboratory conditions
-Is not effective in social conditions as it hard to find time to construct such mnemonics with divided attention or under severe time pressure
What are the advantages & disadvantages of verbal mnemonics?
- Widely used among medical student for learning anatomy
- Has the advantage over the method of loci & pegword because it does not require prior learning
- Very different stories can be constructed for word lists
- However, it requires extensive training
- Hard to recall item without going through the whole list in sequence
- Is ineffective under high speeds of stimuli presntation
What did Bower find about the effectiveness of MofL?
- Compared recall of 5 20-item lists of nouns between method users & non-users
- Method users recalled 72% of nouns vs. only 28% for non-users
Describe De Beni’s experiment testing method of loci in 2000-word oral or written text memorization
- Memory was tested shortly after presentation & 1 week later
- No effect when the text was in written form because of visual interference from text disrupted visual imagery needed for MofL
- Very effective for oral presentation
What is the pegword system?
A technique where items are associated with pegwords which rhyme with a different number between 1-10 (e.g one-bun, two-shoe)
-Take first pegwoed (e.g one) & form an image of the associated word (e.g bun) interacting with the item you need to learn (e.g spaceship is a flying bun) until all items are in the correct order
How does the visual imagery mnemonic for learning names work?
-Think of imaginable substitute for persons’s name & link it to prominent feature in their face e.g Eysenk–> Ice Sink–> big nose like a tap over the sink.
Describe Morris et al. naming party
- University students went to party & told to
1) Use imagery mnemonic
2) Do expanded retrieval practice (retrieve names after increasing intervals following first hearing it)
3) Just learn their names - Imagery mnemonic was even less effective than just learning their names & had an average recall of only 12 names
- Retrieval practice greatly increased name recall especially when the times for practice were self-generated (when load of other tasks were low)
What is the story mnemonic?
- Most effective verbal mnemonic
- Linking a series of unrelated words together within a story
- Involves visual imagery & producing sentences
- Those who constructed narrative stories recalled 93% of 12 lists of 10 nouns vs only 12% of non-users
Describe the experiment to test memory of Helsinki taxi drivers vs students by Kalakoski
- Had to recall lists of 15 street names in fixed order
- Condition 1) streets were connected within spatially continuous route–> Majority correct for drivers
- Condition 2) streets were presented in random order–> still majority drivers with a slight drop from first condition
- Condition 3) nonadjacent streets all over the town in random order–> no difference in the performance of 2 groups
-Drivers could not make use of their spatial knowledge to organize randomly distributed information
What are the 3 requirements of achieving high memory skills according to Ericsson?
1) Meaningful encoding: related to pre-existing knowledge
2) Retrieval structure: cues should be stored with info to aid retrieval
3) Speed-up: extensive practice allows the process to speed up
What are the benefits of training your working memory?
-Greater attentional control
-Less mind wandering
-Increase LT memory
However, studies show no transfer of training to any nontrained measures
Describe the study comparing naturals vs strategists by Wilding & Valentine
-Memory performance of World Memory Champ contestants divided into strategists or naturals on
A) Strategic tasks (name-face associations)
B) Nonstrategic tasks (recognition of snow crystals)
-Strategists performed exceptionally well on strategic tasks than nonstrategic ones but naturals did well on both
