Chapter 6: Educational Psychology

8/10/2019 Chapter 6: Educational Psychology

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Chapter 6:

Learning and Remembering


!

Declarative / Explicit Memory: Long-term knowledge that can be retrieved and thenreflected on consciously.

! Nondeclarative / Implicit Memory: Performance affected by prior experience with no

necessary awareness of this influence.


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! Episodic Memory: Long-term memory for personally experienced

information" Example: memory of receiving your high school diploma

Integrated mental representations: different bits and

pieces of information from different parts of ourconscious and unconscious

! Semantic Memory: Long-term memory for general world knowledge

" Example: knowledge of what a high school diploma is

Mental Encyclopedia

Metamemory

!

Metamemory: Knowledge about (meta) ones own memory, how it works, and

how it fails to work.

! Metacognition:

Knowledge about ones own cognitive system and itsfunctioning.

! Two important issues:

The importance of self-monitoring and awareness or

metacognitive awareness."Accurately assessing ones own mental abilities

The issue of control or self-regulation, what you do with yourmetacognitive awareness.

" Recognizing bad/good performance and taking appropriatesteps afterwards


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Mnemonic Devices!

Active, strategic learning devices or methods.

Formal Mnemonics: use pre-established sets of memory aids andneed considerable practice to be effective.

Informal Mnemonics: those you invent yourself, less elaborate,and are suited to smaller amounts of information.

! Strengths of mnemonics:

The material to be remembered is practicedrepeatedly.

The material is integrated into an existing memoryframework.

The device provides an excellent means of retrievingthe information.

Mnemonic Devices!

Method of loci.

To-be-remembered items are mentally placed into a set of pre-memorized locations, with retrieval being a mental walk throughthe locations.

Example: Assign needed grocery items to landmarks betweenyour work and the grocery store" Broccoli hanging from the UNLV sign" Bananas lining the airport tunnel" Milk flowing down the Windmill exit ramp

! Peg Word:

A pre-memorized set of peg words is used to remember newinformation; the peg words typically used are One is a bun,Two is a shoe, Three is a treeand so on.

Example: imagine needed grocery items with the rhymed word

" Broccoli within a hot dog bun

"A shoe filled with Milk

" Bananas hanging from a tree


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Mnemonic Devices

! The Three Mnemonic Principles:

1. It provides a well-established mental structure forlearning, for acquiring the information.

2.

Using visual images, rhymes, or other kinds ofassociations and the effort and rehearsal necessaryto form them, the mnemonic helps form a durableand distinctive record of the material in memory.

3. The mnemonic guides you through retrieval byproviding effective cues.

The Ebbinghaus Tradition

!

Ebbinghaus wanted to study the fundamental properties ofmemory and forgetting

Created all memory tasks, experimental stimuli, and procedures.

Was the only participant in his studies (introspection).

Began with the publication of Uber das Gedachtnis(Memory: AContribution to Experimental Psychology) in 1885.

! Relearning task:

a list is originally learned, set aside for some period of time, then

later relearned to the same criterion of accuracy: one perfectrecitation of the list, without hesitations.

! Savings score:

Measure of learning

The reduction, if any, in the number of trials necessary forrelearning, compared to original learning.


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The classic forgetting curve from Ebbinghaus. The figure shows thereduction in savings across increasing retention intervals (time betweenoriginal learning and relearning).

The Ebbinghaus Tradition!

Although Ebbinghaus was important in establishingcognitive psychology, his introspective study of non-sense syllables had little real-world usefulness.

! The Current view of Memory Research:

People will invent meaning, regardless of the experimenterswishes. Memory relies heavily on meaning. Research should notignore this.

People in experiments are active. They do not passively recitesyllables, but are intent on using mental resources andstrategies to learn.

There is an issue of ecological validity. Our traditional laboratoryresults need to apply to real-world situations that involvemeaningful material.

" Memory research in the laboratory should lead to actual insight intomemory of classroom material


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Storing Information in Episodic Memory

! Isolation Effect or vonRestorff effect:

Improved memory for one piece of information that ismade distinct from the information around it.

" Such as underlining a word in red ink, or changingits size, using a highlighter

Distinctiveness causes an increase in mental effort toprocess info

Led to the theoretical idea that increased mental

effort increases memory.

Rehearsal!

Rehearsal:

A deliberate recycling or practicing of the contents of the short-term store.

! Two effects of rehearsal:

Rehearsal maintains information in the short-term store,preventing it from being lost or displaced by other information.

The longer an item is held in short-term, the greater theprobability that it will be stored in long-term memory.

! Hellyer (1962) used the

Brown-Peterson task to examinethe effects of rehearsal.

Rehearsal of information

leads to better long-term

retention


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Rehearsal & Levels of Processing!

Maintenance rehearsal: Low-level, repetitive recycling. Typically leads to

poorer memory.!

Elaborative rehearsal: More complex rehearsal that uses information

meaning to aid memory storage.

! Levels of Processing:

More deeply processed information is typicallyremembered better.

" Information that gets only maintenance rehearsalis processed shallowly.

" Information that gets elaborative rehearsal is

processed deeply.

Organization in Storage

!

Organization: Structuring or restructuring information as it is

stored in memory.

The way material is stored governs the way itis recalled.

! Subjective Organization:

Organization developed by a person for structuringand remembering a list of items withoutexperimenter-supplied categories.


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Imagery!

Visual Imagery: The mental representation of visual information. Forming mental images is not an automatic process, extra

mental effort boosts memory

!

Dual coding hypothesis:

imaged words can be encoded into memory twice."Verbal code" Image code

Easier to create image codes for concrete objects (shoe, tree)than abstract concepts (truth, justice)

! Better memory for emotionally intense information

More brain regions are active during the encoding of emotionalmaterial.

! Better memory for information if it is encoded based on

its survival value.

Encoding Specificity!

Information is better remembered when the retrieval

context matched the encoding context. Contextual information is stored as part of the memory trace.

The context serves as a retrieval cue.

! Context effects are not limited to environmental context.

State-dependent learning:Memory is better when the

physiological state at encoding

and retrieval are similar.

Mood-congruent learning:Memory is better when a

persons mood at encoding

and retrieval are similar.


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Retrieving from Episodic Memory

!

Decay: The older a memory trace is, the more likely it has been

forgotten

Difficult to prove, could be that time doesnt cause forgetting, itswhat happens during that time that causes forgetting.

! Interference:

Memories go through a period of consolidation to make thempermanent.

Newly encountered information uses the same neural processesand therefore interferes with the consolidation process of olderinformation.

Memory improves during sleep because the consolidationprocess of older information is not disrupted by new information.

Cognitive Research Methods

! Paired-associate learning:A task in which pairs of items are learned. Upon

presentation of a stimulus, the response is recalled.

The basic elements of a P-A learning task are asfollows:

"A list of stimulus terms is paired with a list ofresponse terms.

"

After learning, the stimulus terms prompt the recallof the proper response terms.

Allows testing of proactive and retroactiveinterference


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Retrieval Failure!

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT)phenomenon A momentary inability to recall some information that is known

to be stored in long-term memory.

A sense of familiarity without recalling the specific info

! Available:

Information stored in long-term memory remains therepermanently.

! Accessibility:

The degree to which information can be retrieved from memory.

! Memory retrieval is facilitated when the appropriate cuesare present.

Cues provide a means of accessing information in long-term

memory. Cues can be any kind of related information.

Testing as Learning

!

Testing Effect Being tested for information boosts memory of that

information.

The additional exposure to material rehearses theinformation.

Testing strengthens the retrieval and recall process ofmemory.

" Can be more beneficial than simply rereading.

"

How will you study for the test?

Immediate feedback strengthens the testing effect


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Amnesia and Implicit Memory! Amnesia:

The catastrophic loss of memory or memory abilities caused bybrain damage or disease.

The permanent cases of amnesia or more helpful for researchpurposes.

!

Retrograde Amnesia: The loss of memory for events before brain injury.

!

Anterograde Amnesia: The disruption of memory for events occurring after brain injury inability to acquire new long-term memories.

!

Dissociation: Disruption in one component of the cognitive system but no

impairment of another.

Doubly dissociated:" Two mental processes are doubly dissociated when a deficit

in one of them does not produce a deficit in the other

process and vice versa.

Special Cases

! Patient K.C.:

A patient who experienced serious brain injury, especially in thefrontal regions.

Showed a seemingly complete loss of episodic memory but acompletely functional semantic memory.

Episodic and semantic memory are dissociated

! Patient H.M.:

Severe anterograde amnesia as a result of brain surgery to preventseizures, damage to hippocampus.

Lost ability to form new memories, his memory of events before

surgery remained complete"Any task that required him to retain information across a delay

showed severe impairment, especially if the delay is filled with adistractor task.

Evidence suggests that H.M.s procedural memory was normal. Hecould improve on procedural tasks over weeks and still have norecollection of ever performing the task.

" Implicit learning was still functioning.


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! Mirror-tracing task:participant traces between the two outlines of

the star while viewing his or her hand in a mirror.

! Patient H.M. shows clear improvement in motor learning star task

after several days of practice. Even on the third day, H.M. had no

memory of doing the task before. An instance of implicit learning and memory

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Chapter 6: Educational Psychology