Working Memory: Implicit and Explicit Cognitive Functions

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Why do we do what we do? This is one question that summarizes the motive for psychology. The answer to this question is the reason why I declared psychology as my major. Current psychologists and those dating back to the year 1879, strove to achieve the answer to this reoccurring question. “The Father of Psychology”, Wilhelm Wundt, and those psychologists of-age, have been strenuously consulting and researching to truly understand the mind and its effect on human behavior. Over the last 127 years, an accumulation of various answers to that specific question have been made. In this paper, the main focus will be the working memory in athletics; how the conscious movements become unconscious and almost instinct-like, and how coaches can teach their athletes better, using explicit and implicit technique.
The mind is very complex and the slightest thing can dramatically change a person. At the same time, the mind can be molded how it is told to. This infers that one with the correct knowledge can change another however they please which is very beneficial to coaches in athletics.
According to Baddeley, in 1986, there is a diagram called The Working Memory Model. The definition of working memory is the part of short-term memory that is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing. In a sense, working memory is the process of consciously memorizing whatever one is focused upon, only being held for a short amount of time. One will not retain this information long, unless it is rehearsed enough to where it will be placed in long term memory. According to Rich Master author of “The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Performance Psychology”, “Working memory processes data via a central executive that directs attention,...

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...-related target words. For example, Movement-the-smooth-was-could (the movement was smooth), the hockey players who were highly skilled, showed faster and more accurate dribbling performance following priming compared to both a skill-focused condition and a high pressured condition. (Masters, 144) “One implication of these findings is that priming potentially can be exploited be coaches to provide specific instructions of which performers are not consciously aware” (Masters, 144). Which directly ties the priming effect back to the effects of implicit memory in motor skill learning with implicit instruction can increase the performance in an athlete.

Works Cited

Farington, E. (Director). (2011). Implicit and Explicit Memory
Masters, R. (). conscious and unconscious awareness in learning and performance. The Oxford handbook of a sport and performance, , 131-153.

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