Memory Improvement:
Why is this important?
Learning effective memorizing strategies can help improve your efficiency with a variety of
tasks, including:
o Studying for a Test
o Memorizing Lines
o Memorizing a Speech
o Remembering names, phone numbers, passwords, recipes, etc.
Objectives
– Review and evaluate the main scientific techniques of memory improvement
– Discuss efficient ways to learn new material
• Semantic and elaborative encoding
• Organisation of input
• Use of imagery
• Use of mnemonic strategies
– Factors influencing retrieval
Learning and input processing
• Meaning and semantic processing
– We efficiently remember meaningful material (therefore root learning is
difficult to us)
• We create effective memory traces when we link new material to our
stored knowledge
– Learning is poor when we learn by heart
– Think of self – referencing effect = shopping for yourself, your friend and
stranger more likely to remember items for yourself than for a stranger
– See this even when someone is encoding objects they do not know but are
relating to them
– Connectionist modelling perspective
- The brain learns by associating new information with existing information.
- It adds new networks to existing networks.
- Linking the information to familiar ideas, personal experiences, or physical senses is
the most powerful means of memorization.
- Which would be more efficient, a story recall or word list recall? A story because
there is more context
Bartlett (1932) - Story learning experiments
• Individuals tend to remember story parts that make sense to them
, – Those that engage with previous experience and knowledge
– Forget those they find less meaningful
– Semantic (meaningful) processing creates stronger, more retrievable
memory traces.
* Bartlett’s stories did not control for which type of processing participants engaged
- Used images and then asked you to reproduce and then to keep going, memory is
constructive
- Therefore, important when looking at eyewitness testimony and memory
- If it can be impacted like this how can we improve it?
- Think to false memories
Use of Orienting tasks
, • Allow for control of type of processing engaged by participants.
• These tasks direct participants’ attention to specified features of test items in order
to control the type of processing done on them.
• Craik (1977)
Same list of words presented to 4 groups
1. Structural task
2. Acoustic
3. Semantic
4. Intentional
Semantic processing is a more effective strategy
Why is semantic processing effective? Levels of processing theory
Craik & Lockhart, 1972
– Deep processing (type of sematic processing) at input gives better
remembering
– Semantic processing allows for deep processing
• Involves more elaborative encoding of the memory trace
• More associative connections made between the new memory trace
and already existing traces in LTM.
Elaborative encoding
– New memory trace gets imbedded in a network of other traces
– Easier to activate it from other connected traces.
– Can be accessed through these other traces – more retrieval routes
Why is this important?
Learning effective memorizing strategies can help improve your efficiency with a variety of
tasks, including:
o Studying for a Test
o Memorizing Lines
o Memorizing a Speech
o Remembering names, phone numbers, passwords, recipes, etc.
Objectives
– Review and evaluate the main scientific techniques of memory improvement
– Discuss efficient ways to learn new material
• Semantic and elaborative encoding
• Organisation of input
• Use of imagery
• Use of mnemonic strategies
– Factors influencing retrieval
Learning and input processing
• Meaning and semantic processing
– We efficiently remember meaningful material (therefore root learning is
difficult to us)
• We create effective memory traces when we link new material to our
stored knowledge
– Learning is poor when we learn by heart
– Think of self – referencing effect = shopping for yourself, your friend and
stranger more likely to remember items for yourself than for a stranger
– See this even when someone is encoding objects they do not know but are
relating to them
– Connectionist modelling perspective
- The brain learns by associating new information with existing information.
- It adds new networks to existing networks.
- Linking the information to familiar ideas, personal experiences, or physical senses is
the most powerful means of memorization.
- Which would be more efficient, a story recall or word list recall? A story because
there is more context
Bartlett (1932) - Story learning experiments
• Individuals tend to remember story parts that make sense to them
, – Those that engage with previous experience and knowledge
– Forget those they find less meaningful
– Semantic (meaningful) processing creates stronger, more retrievable
memory traces.
* Bartlett’s stories did not control for which type of processing participants engaged
- Used images and then asked you to reproduce and then to keep going, memory is
constructive
- Therefore, important when looking at eyewitness testimony and memory
- If it can be impacted like this how can we improve it?
- Think to false memories
Use of Orienting tasks
, • Allow for control of type of processing engaged by participants.
• These tasks direct participants’ attention to specified features of test items in order
to control the type of processing done on them.
• Craik (1977)
Same list of words presented to 4 groups
1. Structural task
2. Acoustic
3. Semantic
4. Intentional
Semantic processing is a more effective strategy
Why is semantic processing effective? Levels of processing theory
Craik & Lockhart, 1972
– Deep processing (type of sematic processing) at input gives better
remembering
– Semantic processing allows for deep processing
• Involves more elaborative encoding of the memory trace
• More associative connections made between the new memory trace
and already existing traces in LTM.
Elaborative encoding
– New memory trace gets imbedded in a network of other traces
– Easier to activate it from other connected traces.
– Can be accessed through these other traces – more retrieval routes
