Elaborative rehearsal

The additional experienced gained from testing actually helps you remember information better – better than studying. Memory techniques that have been used by humans for thousands of years to remember information. Mnemonic. An active, strategic learning device or method.

Rehearsal is the process in which information is kept in short-term memory by mentally repeating it. When the information is repeated each time, that information is re-entered into the short-term memory, thus keeping that information for another 10 to 20 seconds, the average storage time for short-term memory.

The encoding specificity principle is the general principle that matching the encoding contexts of information at recall assists in the retrieval of episodic memories. It provides a framework for understanding how the conditions present while encoding information relate to memory and recall of that information.

A Retrieval Cue is a prompt that help us remember. When we make a new memory, we include certain information about the situation that act as triggers to access the memory. For example, when someone is introduced to us at a party, we don’t only store the name and appearance of the new acquaintance in our memory.

Visual Encoding refers to the process by which we remember visual images. For example, if you are presented a list of words, each shown for one second, you would be able to remember if there was a word that was written in all capital letters, or if there was a word written in italics.

Encoding is achieved using chemicals and electric impulses within the brain. Neural pathways, or connections between neurons (brain cells), are actually formed or strengthened through a process called long-term potentiation, which alters the flow of information within the brain.

Encoding is the process of converting data from one form to another. While “encoding” can be used as a verb, it is often used as a noun, and refers to a specific type of encoded data. There are several types of encoding, including image encoding, audio and video encoding, and character encoding.

Compare and contrast the two ways in which we encode information. Information is encoded through automatic or effortful processing. Automatic processing refers to all information that enters long-term memory without conscious effort.

In summary, elaborative rehearsal is the most effective strategy for encoding. Elaborative rehearsal is the key to more effective learning. A memory aid. Mnemonics are useful for remembering lists of items, especially ordered lists, speeches, and long passages of text.

What information do we encode effortfully, and how does the distribution of practice influence retention? in automatic processing, we unconsciously absorb information about space, time, frequency, and well-learned material.

Why We Forget

• Negative self-concept: we think of ourselves forgetting things.
• We have not learned the material well.
• Psychological reasons: defensive forgetting.
• Disuse.
• Interference due to emotional problems, anxieties, distractions, intense concentration on something else, and intellectual interference.
• Changed Cues.

The memory of how the room looked just before the light bulb broke is an example of an iconic memory. While watching a scary movie, all of a sudden an image flashes across the screen of a frightening girl in makeup. The audience of the movie stores the image that flashed across the screen as iconic memories.

A simple example of working echoic memory is having a friend recite a list of numbers, and then suddenly stopping, asking you to repeat the last four numbers. To try to find the answer to the question, you have to “replay” the numbers back to yourself in your mind as you heard them.

Iconic memory is described as a very brief (<1 second), pre-categorical, high capacity memory store. It contributes to VSTM by providing a coherent representation of our entire visual perception for a very brief period of time.

Iconic memory is so brief and fleeting that it can only hold a small, limited amount of information for an infinitesimal amount of time. The only way to increase the memory of a visual array is to focus one’s attention on the array, which moves the information from iconic memory to short-term memory.

1 Iconic memory is part of the visual memory system which includes long-term memory and visual short-term memory. Iconic memory is a type of sensory memory that lasts just milliseconds before fading.

Sperling concluded that a short-lived sensory memory registers all or most of the information that hits our visual receptors, but that this information decays within less than a second. Subjects are asked to report as many letters as possible from the entire 12-letter display.

The difference in how people attend to information forms the basis for Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) levels of processing model. Their theory proposes that humans undertake three levels of processing, shallow intermediate or deep, when dealing with verbal information.

Each and every time we learn something new our brain forms new connections and neurons and makes existing neural pathways stronger or weaker. Dendrites in your neurons get signals from other dendrites, and the signals travel along the axon, which connects them to other neurons and dendrites.

Sensory memory is an ultra-short-term memory and decays or degrades very quickly, typically in the region of 200 – 500 milliseconds (1/5 – 1/2 second) after the perception of an item, and certainly less than a second (although echoic memory is now thought to last a little longer, up to perhaps three or four seconds).

During every moment of an organism’s life, sensory information is being taken in by sensory receptors and processed by the nervous system. Sensory information is stored in sensory memory just long enough to be transferred to short-term memory.

Sensory memory is the perception of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch information entering through the sensory cortices of the brain and relaying through the thalamus. It lasts only milliseconds and is mostly outside conscious awareness.

sensory memory stores auditory information, while short-term memory stores visual information.