In this essay I will explain how thinking can be organised by using mental images, concepts and schemas in helping improve memory skills. I will look at three different ways of thinking and explain different experiments which support the evidence showing how memory can be improved by using these three different techniques.
The first one to discuss is mental image.
Mental image is a presentation in person mind of the physical world outside of that person. This means that we can think, or see the image associated with the thought and follow the pattern back to the original thought. To describe clearly mental image we can say ‘’ seeing something in a mind eye’’ examples:
• Having a dream
• Hallucinating
• Creating an active fantasy ( day dreaming)
• Remembering something clearly.
One of the experiments that support the significance in using mental images was developed in 1975 by Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson using the keyword technique when learning a foreign language. Two groups of participants were asked to remember a list of 60 words. One word example was word ‘’poublle’’ which in French stands for bin: picture lifting a bell shaped lid off a smelly bin: poo and bell, that image is stored in the memory to recall.
At the end of experiment, group that used the keyword technique to make mental image scored higher than the group that didn’t.
Another way in which we can improve our memory is the usage of concepts. To understand it I need to first explain, what I mean by saying ‘’concept’’. A concept is when we associate certain characteristics to a group of objects or event, and it is used to define things, and place them into categories. In concept overgeneralisation occurs. Overgeneralisation is extending the use of the word...
... middle of paper ...
... would have difficulty in understanding the passage, let alone recalling it accurately, but when they were given a title to it, everything felt into place. The process was called ‘’washing clothes’’. Giving passage a title ‘’washing clothes’’, they were able to more accurately process information. The title provided the participants a schema and they could store and recall the information much better.
All the experiments provided evidence that using mental images, concepts and schemas can improve memory recall, and organise thinking. A mental image can represent information by recalling typical items, colours or unusual images that in connection with verbal or written text, allow us to fix the information in our memory. Concepts group information together making it easier to remember. Finally schemas are used to properly process information and help in later recall.
You’re a senior in college and you have a huge Chemistry exam coming your way. Studying for an exam can be very difficult to remember every little thing. Memory Mnemonics is a certain way of studying and remembering things. According to Patten “Using this system, verbal memory increased dramatically”. (Patten, 1 ) It tells us that the Mnemonic system is inspiring and growing rapidly at the college level. Mnemonics uses techniques of rhymes, acronyms, diagrams, which help people to remember names, dates, facts, figures, and more. In this paper I plan to use the Mnemonics system to tell if this system actually works. Your memory is stored in the hippocampus, which is the area that they call sea horsed area of your brain, which is in the middle of your brain. When you think about a memory, different parts of your brain become more stimulated to recreate the scene. Some ways that the brain remembers things are using some of your five sense and more, such as color, smell, taste, touch, feelings, and shapes. “People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc…”( Thalheimer,2006).
Have you ever wondered what allows us to be aware of the present? It is actually the past! Without knowledge of past information, we would be constantly confused during the present and incapable of almost everything. Hockenbury & Hockenbury (2012) describes memory to be, “…the mental processes that enable us to acquire, retain, and retrieve information”. Without the presence of either of these three processes, the other two would be obsolete. Many experiments have been conducted to better understand these processes and break them down into their basic components.
Memory is one of the most puzzling parts of the brain. How can our brain store
The idea of mental imagery has always been a controversial subject in the field of psychology. Many psychologists have argued that such a concept is impossible to measure because it can not be directly observed. Though they are right about this, it is not impossible to measure how quickly mental rotations of images are processed in our brains. Subjects in this experiment were presented two shapes simultaneously, via computer screen, and asked to make judgement, as quickly as possible, as to whether the two shapes presented were the same or mirror images. Two different shapes were used in this experiment, each given as often as the other. During each trial one shape remained stationary and the other was rotated with varying amounts of 0, 60, 120, and 180 degrees. As the angle of rotation increased reaction times were calculated to see if this had any baring on the speed of the reaction. As predicted, reaction times increased along with angular disparity.
Garry, M., & Palaschek, D. L. (2000). Imagination and Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 6-9.
I. Introduction II. Dementia Senility is a misused term for the loss of ability to think, reason, and remember in older persons. Senility is not a medical condition; it is not normal, natural, or inevitable with aging; it is not limited to older people either. The term senility is replaced in most of my pertinent research by the medical term dementia, which seems to describe a group of symptoms that represent a change or deterioration from an individual's previous level of functioning (Tueth, 1995). Dementia has specific causes, which impair long-term memory and quite relevantly;: language, judgment, spatial perception, behavior, and often personality, interfering with normal social and occupational functioning.
Human memory is flexible and prone to suggestion. “Human memory, while remarkable in many ways, does not operate like a video camera” (Walker, 2013). In fact, human memory is quite the opposite of a video camera; it can be greatly influenced and even often distorted by interactions with its surroundings (Walker, 2013). Memory is separated into three different phases. The first phase is acquisition, which is when information is first entered into memory or the perception of an event (Samaha, 2011). The next phase is retention. Retention is the process of storing information during the period of time between the event and the recollection of a piece of information from that event (Samaha, 2011). The last stage is retrieval. Retrieval is recalling stored information about an event with the purpose of making an identification of a person in that event (Samaha, 2011).
When we asked the question of how we remember, forget, and learn has been the topic of lots of discussions. Examining how importantly the successes and fails of our memory skills affect our lives, this interest seems exceedingly justified. We count on our memories for lots of what we do like whenever we do identifying, appreciating, and responding right according to the objects and persons we interact in our environment and to the actions in which we take part in writing, speaking, reading, or else communicating in thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, and also to recall the past about our experiences. That is our memory, which holds, and allows us to use, the knowledge we have get about ourselves and the life and that catches the ways in which we have configured to the world so as to better cope with it. There is so much we de...
Experiment 1 represents a replication of an experiment done by Bransford & Johnson in 1972. During their experiment they invoked a schema which is an organizational or conceptual pattern in the mind. They gave their participants different titles, some received a specific title and some received a non-specific title, some participants were given the title before the passage was read and some after the passage was read. After determining who got which title they read them a passage looking to see how many different ideas from the passage they could recall. They came to the conclusion that those who were given specific titles and that had them given to them prior to the passage was read were able to recall more then those that received a non-specific title or those that were given the title after the passage was read. The results do show that schemas do help with recall depending on how they are used and when. For our first replication of the experiment we decided to use one of their techniques of experimenting, which involved giving a specific title and a non-specific title.
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
Memory has been and always will be associated with images. As early as 1896, leading psychologists were arguing that memory was nothing more than a continuous exchange of images. (Bergson) Later models of memory describe it as more of an image text; a combination of space and time, and image and word. (Yates) Although image certainly is not the only component of memory, it is undoubtedly an integral and essential part of memory’s composition.
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
The five types are Memory is classified by a few different characteristics. Declarative Memory is the memory of dates, historical facts, and telephone numbers (Silvia Cardoso). It is easier to build up Declarative Memory but can be easily forgotten as well. Procedural Memory is the memory/ability to drive a car, to play sports and tie shoes. This type of memory involves repetitive practices. The other of types of memory is Elaboration, Self Referent and Visual Imagery. Elaboration is known as memory associating with other information. Self Referent Memory is how it is made personally relevant. Then, there is Visual Imagery, which can be used in a few ways, one of which can be used to add richness to the material to be remembered.
Learning and memory are fascinating. The world could not function without either. They both are used in many different fashions in a wide variety of places. Learning and Memory have been carefully studied by professionals but are also well known and used by the common people on a daily basis. I am one of those common people, a student who is constantly learning and making the most of my memory. Since enrolling in The Psychology of Learning and Memory class I have come to the realization that I encounter situations in my life that exemplify the very concepts I have studied. I have also learned that it is beneficial to apply the lessons learned in class to my everyday life. Positive reinforcement, learned helplessness and serial recall are a few among many of the learning and memory models that have come to action in my life and in my final reflections surrounding the course.
Cunillera, Toni, Càmara, Estela, Laine, Matti, & Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni. (2010). Words as anchors: Known words facilitate statistical learning. Experimental Psychology, 57(2), 134-141. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000017