Memory Improvement Strategies

Question 1

Elaborative rehearsal

Answer 1

• Craik/Watkins (1973) distinguish between maintenance and elaborative rehearsal
• Maintenance is simply repeating information, but this only allows information to stay in the STM
• For long term, LTM encoding, information must be ‘elaborately’ rehearsed. It must be made meaningful by linking it to pre existing knowledge
• Linking information to be remembered to pre existing knowledge makes it easier to remember as it may be accessed by a number of routes

Question 2

Organisation

Answer 2

• Chunking can help increase the capacity of the STM
• For LTM processing, create hierarchies to organise information into meaningful patterns
• Bower et al. (1969): pps asked to remember words. organised condition (conceptual hierarchies) remembered 65%, and control only (19%), shows organisation helps recall
• Criticised for lacking realism, as information you are learning in real life is normally in some way associated ie in exams material to recall is already organised (by subject)

Question 3

Interference effects

Answer 3

Retroactive interference: New information interfering with old information ie getting a new telephone number

Proactive interference: Old memory trace disrupts new information, ie giving someone your old number

Question 4

Encoding specificity principle

Answer 4

• Tulving and Thompson (1973)
• when we acquire memories we encode them with links to context from the time of learning. Context becomes a retrieval cue
• The closer the retrieval cues are to original context, the better the recall (ie revisiting the scene of a crime)
• May explain why recognition recall is better than free recall
• Explains context dependant retrieval, recall is better in original context
• ^Supported by Godden/Baddeley (1975 divers)

-Evaluation: Would have to be significant differences in context between original/recall settings before any real difference was noticeable

Question 5

Use of Mnemonics

Answer 5

• Special encoding and effective retrieval cues

- ie initial letters of words as memory aids (Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain)

Question 6

Method of Loci

Answer 6

• Back to Greece/Rome ‘Roman Room’
• Imagine well known setting
• Convert information to be remembered into an image and place it in that setting
• Walk through setting to retrieve information as the visual cues
• Locations act as retrieval cues as you already know them well

Question 7

Peg-word method

Answer 7

• Based on same principle as method of loci, but retrieval cues are a set of learned ‘pegs’
• ie a number is rhymed with an object (1 and gun), and then a word to be remembered is associated with the rhyming word. The word then acts as retrieval cue
• Eg 1 rhymes with ‘gun’. Imagine shooting a loaf of bread. ‘Gun’ becomes the peg word