Chapter 6 Memory Strategies Flashcards
Memory Strategy
You perform mental activity that can help to improve your encoding and retrieval
Elaboration
Concentrating on the specific meaning of a particular concept
Relating the concept to prior knowledge and interconnected concepts already mastered
Distinctiveness
One memory trace should be different from all other memory traces
Surprising rare to find
Rehearsal
Repeating the information you want to learn or remember
Not likely to be as beneficial in terms of accurate recall
Self-reference effect
You enchanted long-term memory by relating the material to your own experiences
Encoding specificity
Recall is often better if the context at the time of encoding matches the context at the time when your retrieval will be tested
Total-time hypothesis
The amount you learn depends on the total time you devote to learning
Distributed practice effect
You will remember more material if you spread your learning trials over time
Spaced learning Voss. Massed learning
Spaced learning
Spread your learning trials over time
Massed learning
Learning the material all at once
Desirable difficulties
A learning situation that is somewhat challenging but not too difficult
The testing effect
Being tested on material also boosts your long-term recall for that material
Roediger and Karpicke (2006)
students read essays, testing immediately or after delay, repeated study or intervening test
Carpenter, Pashler, and Vul (2006)
tested memory for learned information in short- essay format, then tested again using a multiple- choice format
participants who had taken the test outperformed a study-only control group
Testing increases memory at a later point in time that is transferable across different types of tests and test questions.
Mnemonics
Mental strategies designed to improve your memory
ROYGBIV
Never Eat Soggy Waffles
Keyword method
You identify an English word (the keyword) that sounds similar to the new word you want to learn
Useful when learning foreign language
Familiar location method
Associate the items to be learned with a series of visual images of physical locations
Useful for learning a list of items in a specific order
Chunking
Combine several small unites into larger meaningful units
Hierarchy technique
Organize items in a series of classes from general to specific
External memory aids
Any device, external to yourself, that facilitates your memory in some way
First-Letter Technique
Compose a word for sentence using the first letters of the words you are trying to remember
Narrative Technique
Make up stories that link a series of words together
Bower and Clark
However you need to be able to generate a narrative easily and reliably during both learning and recall
Retrospective memory
Remembering information you acquired in the past
Prospective memory
Remembering that you need to do something in the future
Absent mindedness and Prospective memory failures
Divided attention
Disrupting a customary activity
Familiar surrounding and automatic tasks
Preoccupation, distraction, time pressure
Improving prospective memory
Use mental imagery
Focus on distincitivess
Use external memory aids
Comparing prospective and retrospective memory
Prospective memory typically focuses on action.
Retrospective memory is more likely to focus on remembering information and ideas.
Research on prospective memory is more likely to focus on ecological validity.
Both will be more accurate if you use both distinctive encoding and effective retrieval cues.
Both kinds of memories are more accurate when you have a short delay prior to retrieval.
Both rely on the frontal lobe.
Memory-Improvement Strategies
Suggestions from previous chapters
Do not divide your attention between several simultaneous tasks.
Keep in mind that your working memory is limited; figure out strategies to overcome this problem.
Process information in terms of its meaning,
When you study, apply the encoding- specificity principle by creating questions for yourself that have the same format as the questions on your exam.
Don’t be overconfident about the accuracy of your memory for events in your life.
Memory-Improvement Strategies
Techniques related to practice
The amount you learn depends on the total time that you spend practicing.
You’ll learn more if you spread your learning trials over time (the distributed-practice effect).
You’ll enhance your memory simply by taking
tests on the material.
Memory-Improvement Strategies
Mnemonics using imagery
Use imagery, especially imagery that shows an interaction between the items that need to be recalled.
Use the keyword method; for example, if you are learning vocabulary in another language, identify an English word that sounds like the target word, and link the English word with the
Memory-Improvement Strategies
Mnemonics using organization
Use chunking by combining isolated items into meaningful units.
Construct a hierarchy by arranging items in a series of categories.
Take the first letter of each item you want to
remember, and compose a word or sentence
from these letters (first-letter technique).
Memory-Improvement Strategies
Improving prospective memory
Create a vivid, interactive mental image to prompt future recall.
Create a specific reminder or an external memory aid.
Metacognition
Your knowledge and control of your cognitive processes
Supervises the way you select and use your memory strategies
Includes self-knowledge, meta memory, metacomperhension
Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus Individual Items
In general, people tend to be overconfident if you ask them to predict their total score on a memory test.
In contrast, people tend to be accurate if you
ask them to predict which individual items they
will remember and which ones they will forget.
Foresight Bias
When people overestimate the number of answers that they will supply on a future test
Dunning et al (2003)
Had participants estimate of total score after
finishing an exam
less competent students overestimated
performance
Estimating Scores Immediately Versus After a Delay
People do not provide accurate memory estimates for individual items, if they make these estimates immediately after learning the items.
In contrast, if they delay their judgments, they are reasonably accurate in predicting which
Delayed judgments are especially likely to provide accurate assessments of memory performance because they assess long-term memory.
Metamemory About Factors Affecting Memory Accuracy
Many people lack knowledge of memory strategies.
“All memory strategies are not created equal.”
Students may believe that some factors do have an effect on memory, although these
Metamemory and the Regulation of Study Strategies
Need to coordinate memory and decision making
It can be hard to spend more time on the difficult material
Conversely we often spend too much time on things we already know
Allocating Time When the Task is Easy
Nelson and Leonesio (1988)
examined how students distribute their study
time when they can study at their own pace Students allocated more study time for the
items that they believed would be difficult to
master.
Students spend longer than necessary studying
items they already know, and not enough time studying the items they have not yet mastered.
Allocating Time When the Task is Difficult
This is often harder than the lab tasks we use to study it.
conceptual information not word lists Students have limited study time
Son and Metcalfe (2000)
Tested on a series of eight encyclopedia-
style biographies
Only allowed 30 minutes to study Participants ranked the biographies in terms
of difficulty
Students spent the majority of their study
time on the biographies they considered
Allocating Time When the Task is Difficult
Other studies also indicated that when facing time pressure, students choose to study material that seems relatively easy to master.
Experts concentrate their time on more challenging material, compared to novices.
Tip-of-the-tongue effect
Subjective experience of knowing the target word for which you are searching, but cannot recall it right now; generally an involuntary effect
Feeling-of-knowing effect
Subjective experience of know some information, but cannot recall it right now; more conscious experience
Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect
Brown and McNeill (1966)
given the definition of an uncommon English
word,and told to try to identify the word when the definition produced a tip-of-the-
tongue phenomenon, try to generate words
with similar sound
Tip-of-the-Tongue Effect
Later Research
frequency of occurrence
bilinguals vs. monolinguals
first letter and number of syllables; grammatical gender
tip-of-the-finger
Feeling-of-Knowing Effect
More informations
You predict that you could correctly recognize the correct answer to a question
related to the amount of partial information retrieved
Tip of the finger effect
The subjective experience of know the target sign, but that sign is temporary inaccessible
Metacomperhension
Throught about language comprehension
Metacomperhension accuracy in college students
generally are not very accurate in
metacomprehension skills
may not notice inconsistencies or missing information in a passage
believe they have understood something because they are familiar with its general topic
fail to retain specific information
overestimate how they will perform when
Metacomprehension Accuracy
Pressley and Ghatala (1988)
reading comprehension using an SAT passage followed by multiple-choice questions
students rated how certain they were that they had answered each question correctly
little difference between estimates on correct
Improving Metacomprehension
read and summarize
read a second time
