Strategies for Memory Improvement

LO: 1)To understand explanations in forgetting memory

2)Discuss suitable ways to improve memory

Starter:

• On your mini-whiteboards write down 5 factors affecting schemas in Eye-witness Testimonies.

You should have:• Anxiety/shock• Age• Consequences• Time delay• Individual differences

Key terms for today…

• Visual

• Auditory

• Kinaesthetic

• Interpersonal

• Intrapersonal

Last week

• We looked at how memory can be re-constructed through the use of both leading and non-leading questions

• Now we will be looking at other reasons why we remember and forget certain things and how we can improve our memory

What is flashbulb memory?

Interpersonal?

Intrapersonal?

High semantic meaning

Kinaesthetic

Emotions

• Can depression affect memory? How and why?

Caused by….. How it affects memory

How do you remember

things/revise??

Verbal Mnemonics

• Word or sentence is formed from the initial letters of other words– Acronyms (ROYGBIN)

– Acrostic (poem or sentence i.e. Planets)

– Rhymes – group of words with identify and rhythm i.e. ‘How many days has September?’

Memorise this:

TVCIALTMSTMNASABBCITV

20 seconds!!

Now try this...

TV CIA LTM STM NASA BBC ITV

Is it easier??

What is this called?

Chunking

• Postcodes

• Chase et al 1981 – One mnemonist SF managed to remember

more than 80 digits because he could give meaning to groups of digits due to his knowledge of running times– though he had to practice lots!

LOCI (visual Mnemonic)• Identify a set of places that you

can imagine walking through, e.g. rooms in your house.

• Number of places used depends on what needs to be remembered.

• Convert each item that needs remembered into a mental image and place it mentally in a location.

• When you are ready to recall, you imagine walking through the various locations you used.

• The locations act as retrieval cues because you already know them well.

An example: WMM

In pairs…

• Tell the person sitting next to you how many windows your home has.

• How did you do it?

 1) How many folds would it take to make this

into a complete cube? 

2) How many sides would the cube have when folded?

• LO: To consolidate knowledge of emotional factors in memory including flashbulb memories and repression

Starter: Recap on reconstructive memory

• Put the verbs in order in terms of which group would estimate the fastest to the slowest speed

 _____________ _____________ _____________

______________ _____________

HitHit CollidedCollided SmashedSmashed

ContactedContacted BumpedBumped

Answers:SmashedSmashed

CollidedCollided

BumpedBumped

HitHit

ContactedContacted

Key factors

 

What factors below do you think will negatively affect your ability to give correct eyewitness testimony?

Being old being young being male being female being educated being uneducated

 

If the situation was dangerous if you had a clear view

if you are given leading questions after the event

How much you an anxious person prejudice people

How important your testimony is going to be

Schemas in reconstructive memory

 Schema

• Try to answer the following questions on the picture you saw at the beginning of this topic. • were there other people in the carriage• How many people were fighting?• Who was carrying a knife?

 

Our preexisting beliefs may affect our memory of events. Allport’s study showed that people’s schema (or pre-existing beliefs about what is likely to happen in a given scenario) effected how they recalled the event. •Bartlett – Reconstructive memory – we combine memory of the event with our own schema so that we create a new memory.

 •List (86) – Gave people a list of events that might happen in a shoplifting incident and got them to rate how likely these were to occur. She then made a video showing 8 different shoplifting incidents including some items people rated as high probability and some as low probability. She then showed video to new subjects and a week later asked them to recall what they had seen. She found that participants were more likely to recall high probability events and often reported high probability events even if they had not occurred in the video.

 

With your partner list the top 10 high probability events that might happen in a school fight (these would be our schema of school fights).

Keyword method (visual Mnemonic)

• Atkinson & Raugh (1975)– For associating bits of information i.e.

picturing the two things together• A (weird) example...

– Horse in Spanish is ‘caballo’ pronounced “cab-eye-yo”

– Picture a horse with a giant eye on it’s back – Conjuring up the visual image should help

recall the word

• Can you think of any examples you have used?

+

+

Labeling

Lay

Bell

ing

+

Demonisation

Demon

Eyes

-ation

++ P

Stereotype

Stereo

Tie

+

+Meritocracy

eritOcre

Sea

How do these techniques work?

• Organisation• To improve your LTM it is helpful to create

hierarchies to organise material into meaningful patterns. – Putting items in order– Organisation makes memories more accessable

• Bower (1969) – asked participants to learn a list of words. The

experimental group saw the words organised in conceptual hierarchies, while the control group saw the words presented randomly.

– In a total of four trials, participants saw 112 words and the experimental ‘organised’ group recalled on average 65% correctly whereas the control group recalled only 19% correctly.

Conceptual Hierarchy

Elaborate rehearsal

• The information must be made elaborated on – making them meaningful – e.g. linking it to pre-existing knowledge.

• Elaborated memories are easier to recall because several routes can be used to reach items in memory.

• The amount of rehearsal is important but the nature (elaboration) is more important!

Dual Coding Hypothesis• Pavio (1971)

– Proposed words and images processed separately

– Based on studies of patients with damage to temporal lobes and could not process images

– According to Pavio, concrete words, which can be made into images are double encoded in memory.

– Once as verbal symbol, once as image-based symbol

• Double coding increases likelihood of remembering!..... Link to phonological loop.

Your task…• Design a leaflet for year 11 students giving them advice on

successful memory improvement and revision strategies.

• WHAT TO DO: – Select at least 3 strategies that you think would work and

for each:– Explain how it works– Apply it to a subject (e.g. you could use this when

revising your History work by…)– Why it is a good strategy.

• Put your information together in a user-friendly leaflet. The best one will be distributed to my year 11 students.

Examples:

Visual imagery-Spider diagrams and mind maps

Organisation of information into hierarchies

Verbal mnemonics – Acronyms, Rhymes, Chunking

Active / deep processing – Adding a deeper meaning to information (Elaborative)

Bartlett – Reconstructive memory

Reconstructive Memory

Repeated Reproductions – This involved showing participants a story or drawing and asking them to reproduce it shortly after, then repeatedly over weeks, months and years.A key feature of the stimulus material was that it belonged to a culture that was exceedingly different to that of the participants.He kept a record of the participants ‘reproductions’ and none of them knew the purpose of the study.

To investigate how memory is reconstructed when recall is repeated over a period of weeks and months. In particular, it was to see how cultural expectations affect memory and lead to predictable distortions.

ProcedureProcedure

AimsAims

The key findings were:The story was shortened, mainly by omissionsThe language and phraseology was changed to language and concepts from the participant’s own culture. For example, using ‘boats’ instead of ‘canoe’.The recalled version soon became very fixed, though each time it was recalled there were slight variations.

FindingsFindings

CriticismsCriticismsConclusionsConclusions

Homework:

• Bartlett – reconstructive memory – Research this for homework and display it any way that you want to for next week.

• You may display it in the form of an A3 poster• A PowerPoint presentation• A movie• A slideshow• Even a song!• Any other ideas are welcome