Lesson 6 - Questions

Question 1

Briefly describe the four concepts covered in previous chapters, and the associated implications for improving memory.

Answer 1

Memory strategies informed by memory concepts

Divided Attention
- people do worse when they are dividing their attention, people perform better then their mental efforts on one task

Working Memory
- understand the limits of the working memory; doing too much may tax the sketchpad or phonological loop

Levels of Processing
- will recall information more accurately if you process it at a deep level rather than shallow

• elaboration
• will concentrate on the specific meaning of a particular concept, relate this concept to prior knowledge & interconnected concepts you’ve mastered
• rehearsal is not as effective
• creating why questions helps master material
• distinctiveness
• one memory trace should be different from all other memory traces; people forget information that’s not different
• self reference effect, enhancing long term memory by relating the material to your own experiences

Encoding Specificity

• recall is better if the context at the time of encoding matches the context at the time of retrieval
• study in the same place you’ll take your exam
• if you’re studying for essay exams, you should periodically quiz yourself rather than just read the material

Question 2

Summarize the research on the effect of practice on memory.

What is the total time hypothesis?

What is the distributed-practice effect (also known as spaced learning)? What is the testing effect?

Answer 2

total-time hypothesis: amount of information that you learn depends on the total time you devote to learning
- generally true, but study time only predicts GPA when researchers assess quality of the study strategy

Distributed-practice effect: you will remember more material if you spread your learning trials over time instead of cramming

• studies support this for recall & recognition
• desirable difficulties: learning situation that is challenging, but not too difficult
• delay of at day is especially effective, if you quiz yourself many times in a row it may give the appearance of mastery, but if you wait, you may make more mistakes but you’ll focus more on the concept & know it better.

*Bahrick & Phelps had people learn Spanish-English word pairs. Some people were tested again one day later, others 30 days later. Those in the 30 day tests did better even 8 years later.

Testing Effect

• being tested increases your memory of the material
• boost long-term memory & recall
• testing provides practice in retrieving the material
• testing also increases memory for a later point in time that is transferable across different types of tests & questions as found out my Carpenter et al.

*Reodiger & Karpicke asked students to read short essays, half the studies studied the same essays again & the other took a test on the contents. They wrote down as much as they could remember. Then, they received a final test - some after the last activity, others 2 days or one week after. Those in the delayed conditions did better.

Question 3

Define “mnemonics.”

Describe two mnemonic techniques that involve the use of imagery, and the general findings associated with each technique.

Which technique do you think would be more effective? Why?

Answer 3

Mnemonics are mental strategies designed to improve your memory

• many strategies require practice, so it can be difficult at first but gets better.
• use strategies that suit your abilities.

Imagery

• imagining things together, or in a scene can help w/ memory & is especially useful when the words are placed together.
• keyword method: identify an english word similar to the word you’re trying to remember & create an image linking them
• Method of loci: to remember items, think about a familiar location & then put the object, mentally, in that location.

Question 4

What four mnemonic techniques make use of organization? Provide examples of each.

Answer 4

Organization

• using organization mnemonics involves bringing systematic order to the material they want to learn
• when you have constructed a well-organized framework, retrieval efficiency increases

Chunking: combining small units into larger units
- Bower & Springston say people recalled more material when a string of letters were grouped according to meaningful units

Hierarchy Technique: system where items are arranged in classes from most general to most specific

• Bower found that people who learn words in an organized structure, rather than random structure recalled more words
• an outline is an example, using a chapter outline is useful

First Letter Technique:
take the first letter of every word you want to remember and make a sentence or a word
- lab research can’t prove the effectiveness of this

Narrative Technique: making up stories that link the words together
-Bower & Clark found the narrative technique is effective & can be used with people who have memory impairments

Question 5

Define “prospective memory” and “retrospective memory” and provide original examples of each.

Compare and contrast prospective memory with retrospective memory.

How is absentmindedness related to prospective memory?

Describe some ways of improving prospective memory.

Answer 5

Retrospective memory: remembering information you acquired in the past

Prospective memory: remembering that you need to do something in the future

• Older adults often out-perform younger adults on naturalistic tests of prospective memory. one reason is that older adults are more likely to external memory aids to help them remember to do things in the future. younger adults usually rely on internal strategies, which often fail. the awareness of memory limitations is an example of metamemory.
• some clinical people have difficult times with prospective memory
• older adults make more errors in lab setting

tasks using prospective memory

• must establish that you intend to accomplish some task in the future
• at a future time, you have to remember & fulfill your intention

Comparison

• prospective memory focuses on action, respective memory is focusing on remembering information & ideas
• prospective memory is more likely to have ecological validity
• both governed by the same principles, memory is more accurate if you use both distinction & retrieval cues, similar rates of forgetting over time, & both rely on frontal lobe

Absentmindedness

• propective memory issue, typically. rarely with retrospective.
• more likely to happen with divided attention situations, in familiar situations wen you are performing a task automatically, if you’re preoccupied or distracted, feeling time pressure, are under stress

Improving prospective memory

• external memory aids are effective; they’re any device external to oneself that facilitates memory in some way
• placement of the memory aid is important

Question 6

Define “metacognition.”

Define “metamemory.”

Describe the general findings on metamemory for total score accuracy versus individual item accuracy and immediate versus delayed estimation.

What are the factors that affect metamemory accuracy?

Describe the general findings on how students regulate their study strategies through the allocation of study time on easy and difficult tasks.

Answer 6

Metacognition: one’s knowledge & control of the cognitive processes
- active process, supervises way you select & use memory strategies, requires focused thinking & self assessment, belongs to the larger issue of self-knowledge

Metamemory: people’s knowledge, monitoring, and control of their memory

People are overconfident when asked to predict their total score on a memory test, but accurate when asked about which individual items they remember/forgot.

• foresight bias: people are over confidence about their performance on future exams
• less-competent students are not aware of their limitations

People aren’t very accurate at estimating individual items if they make these estimates immediately after learning the items, but if they delay their judgments they are more accurate. This is because when you take the test, you need to use your long-term memory, but when you give immediate judgments you can use your working memory.

Factors that Affect Memory

• not knowing strategic ways to influence memory, using no specific memory aid
• must understand that not all memory strategies are created equal
• people tend to think that factors that influence memory don’t, and vice versa

Regulation of Study Strategies

Allocating time

• students spend more time studying difficult to master topics, did not passively review materials equally
• this research says people make active choices
• students are not very accurate at judging whether they have mastered materials & spend longer studying things they already know

Allocating time when task is difficult
- novices will spend their time mastering easy material, experts will spend their time mastering harder material

Question 7

Define the “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon, and explain how it is related to metacognition.

Describe the classic study and findings by Brown and McNeill (1966) about the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

Summarize the recent research on the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

What is the “feeling of knowing” phenomenon, and how is it related to the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon?

Answer 7

tip-of-the-tongue: subjective experience of knowing a target word, but cannot recall it right now

• involuntary
• know that it’s at the tip of their tongue, can usually produce the first letter or similar sounding word
• Brown & McNeill produced TOT situations by giving people the definition for more obscure english words
• young adults have 1 a week, bilinguals have it more friendly because they have a greater number of separate words
• TOT in other languages & in the deaf community which is knowing a sign but it’s temporarily inaccessible
• right prefrontal region

feeling-of-knowing: subjective experience of knowing some information, but you cannot recall it right now.

• more conscious
• strong FOK if they can retrieve a large amount of partial information
• less extreme/irritating than TOT
• left prefrontal region

both activates frontal lobe which is important in megacognitive tasks & it’s related to megacognition because you make judgements about whether you know something

*words used infrequently are more susceptible to a tip-of-the-tongue state. access to a target word is blocked when we unintentionally activate a related by incorrect target. the incorrect target can act as a blocker to the correct one.

Question 8

Define “metacomprehension.”

What did Pressley and Ghatala (1988) find regarding metacomprehension accuracy?

What is the relation between metacomprehension and reading comprehension?

Do Demonstration 6.5.

Summarize the suggestions provided by Matlin and Farmer for improving metacomprehension.

Answer 8

refers to thoughts about language comprehension

Pressley & Ghatala found that they rated themselves as 73% sure of accuracy when they were accurate, but 64% of accuracy when they weren’t. people are highly confident & not good at knowing when they don’t understand what they have read.

when people are high on metacomprehension, they are usually high on reading comprehension

people who think they are good readers are usually better at metacomphrension accuracy, probably because they know their reading level so they know when they don’t understand things. metacomprehension requires you to regulate your reading.

• read a passage, wait, then try to explain it to yourself without looking
• read the material a second time, especially if you have lower working memory