Day 11: More IPT

Question 1

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

Answer 1

• Capacity: Unlimited
• Forms of Storage:
  
  • Language, images, sensations, abstractions, etc.
  • Interconnected
• Duration
  
  • Forgetting: Poor retrieval?
  • Dependent on encoding?

Question 2

LTM Encoding Processes

Answer 2

• Selection: Choosing the information to attend to and subsequently encode in LTM
• Rehearsal:
  
  • Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating something over and over in a short time period to keep information in working memory
  • Elaborative Rehearsal (aka Elaboration): Rehearsal that helps learners make associations between the new information and things they already know

Question 3

LTM Encoding Processes (Continued)

Answer 3

• Rote Learning: Learning information via maintenance rehearsal
• Meaningful Learning: Relating new information to knowledge already stored in LTM
  
  • Book differentiates between this and elaboration; for our purposes, they are synonymous
  • Facilitates both storage and retrieval
  • Self-reference effect is particularly helpful
  • Examples of elaboration: Mnemonic devices, Anecdotes, Examples, Descriptions

Question 4

LTM Encoding Processes (Continued)

Answer 4

• Internal Organization: When pieces of new information are interconnected in some way
  
  • Most effective when learner-generated (not teacher-generated)
  • Examples of internal organization: Hierarchies, Graphic Organizers (charts, tables, graphs), chunking into meaningful pieces

Question 5

Chunking (Example)

Answer 5

• Ericsson, Chase, and Faloon (1980)
  
  • Male undergraduate student memorized random strings of numbers for 1 hour a day, 3-5 days a week, for a year and a half
  • Memory span increased from 7 to 79 digits
  • Not instructed to chunk in any way or use any strategy at all
  • Invented his own strategy: 3492 was encoded as “3 minutes and 49 point 2 seconds, near world-record mile time”/He was a runner!

Question 6

LTM Encoding Processes (Continued)

Answer 6

• Visual Imagery: Mental pictures that capture new information
  
  • Powerful means of encoding information into LTM
  • Often superior to verbally stored information
  • Ex: “Seeing” something on a page of a book, but not being able to recall the words themselves
  • Tend to be imprecise representations of information

Question 7

LTM: Forgetting

Answer 7

• Forgetting: Loss of information from memory or the inability to access information
  
  • Failure to store or consolidate information
  • Failure to retrieve information
• Decay: The gradual fading of information over time
• Interference Theory:
  
  • Proactive Interference: New information is lost because it is mixed up with previously learned information
  • Retroactive Interference: Previously learned information is lost because it is mixed up with new information

Question 8

Ebbinghaus’ Learning Curve

Answer 8

Performance measure vs Number of trials or attempts at learning

Question 9

Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

Answer 9

% Remembered VS Days after learning

Question 10

Central Executive

Answer 10

• The CEO if the dual-store memory model
• Controls and monitors the flow of information throughout the memory system
• Matures over childhood and adolescence
• Vast individual differences
• Controls metacognition

Question 11

Central Executive Processes

Answer 11

• Allocating attention (SR -> WM)
• Maintenance Rehersal (Keeping info. in WM)
• Encoding (WM -> LTM)
• Retrieval (LTM -> WM)
• Organization (In WM, and during encoding into LTM)
• Metacognition (“Thinking about thinking”)

Question 12

Types of Knowledge

Answer 12

• Declarative Knowledge: Knowing “that”
  
  • Episodic Knowledge: Personal life experiences (Ex. “I remember when I graduated from college”)
  • Semantic Knowledge: General knowledge of the world (Ex. “I know that even numbers end with 0, 2, 4, 6, 8”)
• Procedural Knowledge: Knowing “how”
  
  • Conditional Knowledge: Knowing “when” (Ex. “If…then” knowledge)
• Conceptual Knowledge: Knowing “why”
  
  • Combines declarative and procedural knowledge

Question 13

Types of Knowledge (Continued)

Answer 13

Explicit vs. Implicit Knowledge

• Explicit Knowledge: Knowledge that you can easily recall and explain (Ex: The names of the Great Lakes, the steps to baking a blueberry pie, or why the seasons change)
• Implicit Knowledge: Knowledge that you can’t consciously recall or explain (Learning a foreign language/Memory loss from traumatic brain injury)

Question 14

Memory Diagram

Answer 14

Long-term Memory (Lifetime)

• Explicit Memory (conscious)
  
  • Declarative Memory (facts, concepts, and events)
    
    • Episodic Memory (events and experiences
    • Semantic Memory (facts and concepts)
• Implicit Memory (unconscious)
  
  • Procedural Memory (skills and habits)

Question 15

Clifford Nass on Multitasking (Stanford University)

Answer 15

• Research in social science says that people who chronically multitask show an enormous range of deficits
• The people who says they’re the best at multitasking because they do it all the time
• People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy.
  
  • They can’t manage a working memory.
  • They’re chronically distracted
• They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand

Question 16

What activities can we multitask?

Answer 16

• Depends on automaticity and attention

- Reading, writing, talking, and listening cannot be down simultaneously

Question 17

Switch-Tasking

Answer 17

• Not actually doing multiple things at once
• Shifting attention from one thing to another
  
  • Losing processing time and attention with shifts

Question 18

Phones and Achievement

Answer 18

• When comparing students in a control, low-distraction, and high-distraction environment
• Students that did not use their phone
  
  • Took more notes
  • Were able to recall more detailed information the lecture
  • Scored a full letter grade and a half higher than students actively using their phones

Question 19

Summary of Multitasking

Answer 19

• Can decrease test score and problem-solving ability
• Decrease productivity
• Increase time it takes to complete a task
• Affects attention and focus
• Can be kept in check by using central executive to control attention and self-regulate our efforts

Question 20

IPT: in summary

Answer 20

• IPT is a group of cognitive theories that focuses on how people process stimuli in our environment
• Learning: Acquisition of mental representations
• Dual-Store Memory Model
  
  • Sensory Register
  • Working Memory
  • Long-term Memory
    
    • Encoding and Retrieval
    • Forgetting and Interference