Chapter-7 (Mental Imagery and cognitive Maps)
1. Imagery is a mental representation of stimuli without stimuli physical presence.
Perception vs. Imagery
Requires us to register information through imagery is mental representation
Ears, eyes
Perception relies on both bottom up and imagery relies on top-down processing
Top-down processing
There are three points to chapter 7 Nature of mental images, cognitive neuroscience research on different types of mental imagery, cognitive mps or mental representation of geographic information.
Nature of mental images: there is a debate in mental images whether our mental images are similar to perception or language. Mental image stored as analog code (depictive representation) is physical object resembling our mental image. Propositional code is language description of an object that does not physically resemble the original image.
Imagery and rotation: according to research conducted, we tend to rotate physical objects in mental images as we rotate them physically. Imagery and interface: our visual perception can interfere with our visual imagery when we try to visualize an object that is not physically there and at the same time look at an object that is physically there our mental image can interfere with what’s in front of us. Similarly, auditory imagery can interfere with auditory perception; motor movement can interfere with motor images.
Cognitive Neuroscience on mental imagery, imagery and perception have the same psychological processes. But at the biological level, they are different; visual perception activates rods and cones in the retina, whereas in imagery top-down processing takes place. Auditory cortex are active when we are asked to imagine hearing songs, and motor imagery, cerebellum is active when we imagine making hand gestures or hitting an object.
The last point on the chapter is cognitive map that is our mental representation of the environment around us. Cognitive map is part of spatial cognition that comprises how we recall the world; it also includes different discipline interpretations such as spatial knowledge, spatial arrangement and so on.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time. Memory strategies builds on the concept I have learned so far, once I know what working-memory and long-term memory are, then this two chapters help me better utilize these memories with the idea of metacognition and metamemory in mind. Memory strategy relies on perception, attention, and consciousness and in the end metamemory and metacognition; if we organize how we learn what materials we remember in what circumstances then our memory improves and ultimately store information in the long-term memory. Mental imagery and Cognitive Maps also aids to our memory strategy or how we learn if we can picture or visualize an object or item that is not physically present. This chapter also indicates how mental image is stored either in analog-code or propositional code. Memory strategy can be productive if we know how we store information or how we draw mental images of items we need to remember.
3. What am I still not clear on?
In image rotation, research showed that we treat physical objects the same way we treat mental images when we rotate them. I don’t understand why there is still a controversy about analog and propositional coding? I think it would be difficult to process the rotation using language like representation.
4. How would I apply this to my own teaching/work?
I don’t teach 3-D math or physics classes but I took some. So image rotation can be used if students are trying to visualize 3-D problems when trying to locate the estimated location of a particle in space with the corresponding (x,y,z) coordinates. If the instructors give the location students might try to look at it in different direction to calculate the unknown.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? D I believe it? Why?
The author tried to include research, but I don’t see enough research on propositional coding. That is how we code using descriptive representation of imagery , the book does mention Zenon Pylyshyn’s idea on how we perform cognitive tasks requiring imagery we use the language like representation from prior knowledge.
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
When we try to teach children or adults, it is important to understand how they perceive or how they image objects/words in order to design activities or lesson plans to assist them comprehend, apply and perform other higher levels of thinking.
7. When would I actually use this-under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I believe mental imagery can be applied to students at different levels, starting with children learning shapes, up to students learning objects on space using 3-D coordinate system. But as for me I always use cognitive maps to estimate distance or if I want to picture how far a particular state mentioned on the news from MO.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
It would be more practical if they try to research on young children or even college students to make the point on the controversy of analog and propositional coding.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
chapter6 & 13 memory strategies and metacognition
Chapter 6- Memory Strategies
1. Memory strategies: are strategies that develop our encoding and retrieval.
Memory strategies are related to repetition. Mnemonics Using Imagery is when we try to visualize something that is not physically there. Visual imagery is effective when the items to be recalled are interacting with each other. Another method in mnemonics is Keyword method; this method uses the link between similar sounding words, old and new words. The old one helps recall the new. The Loci method is a method where we associate the physical locations of the items to be recalled.
Mnemonics Using Organization: retrieving materials we learn is much easier if we have them in an organized manner. There are four techniques to organize mnemonics: a. Chunking
b. Hierarchy c. First-letter Technique d. Narrative Technique.
The next approach to memory improvement is the comprehensive approach that is health, mental condition, getting enough sleep.
Metacognition is what we know about our cognitive process. Metamemory is what we know about our memory, we can predict on how many items we recall from a given list of items. The chapter also talks about the difficulties we might have about our metamemory on concepts rather than recalling list of words. Our knowledge about what affects our memory plays an important role in our quest for the best memory strategy. Ch-13 focuses on children’s memory as early as two days old. It starts with recognizing mother and goes on with conjugate reinforcement in infants, children’s working memory, long-term memory; it concludes that children’s recognition skills way better than recall skills.
Metacognition in children: children have no idea on how their memory works. It emphasizes that how important it is to get children understand “realizing the necessity of effort “. That is to assist them to realize in working on the materials they couldn’t remember rather than repeating the materials they can already remember.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time. Memory strategies builds on the concept I have learned so far, once I know what working-memory and long-term memory are, then this two chapters help me better utilize these memories with the idea of metacognition and metamemory in mind. Memory strategy relies on perception, attention, and consciousness and in the end metamemory and metacognition; if we organize how we learn what materials we remember in what circumstances then our memory improves and ultimately store information in the long-term memory.
3. What am I still not clear on?
According to the text, people can predict which items they recall, but it also says that there exists metamemory inaccuracy that is over estimating how much we remember. How do we assess our metamemory accuracy without making mistakes on exam?
4. How would I apply to my own teaching/work?
Most of the work I do involves concepts rather than basic level of recalling items. I can use rehearse the task over and over again to recall for next time. Challenge trainees to assess how they learn best and practice the method for all upcoming training.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The author provides several studies to proof point. The author provides “classic research” on Metamemory on an item-by-item basis; she did not present a non-classic study to support her claim that this actually is classic study. The author assumes that readers already know about several psychology studies.
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It is very important in terms of teaching how to use memory strategies to retain information from grade-school level to college-level. I believe if we train children as early as middle school on how to organize their memory and in the end metamemory and metacognition, it could help college students struggle less. The question is will there be enough time to integrate learning materials and metamemory skills?
7. When would I actually use this-under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I would definitely use this with students with no knowledge of how they recall and how they learn. I would first give part of the first material and then challenge the students to come up with their own way of mastering the material according to their individual metamemory assessments.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
It would be very nice there were some case-studies on specific classes such as language learning, math and science; where these strategies can be used and actually got results. For example case-studies such as in such and such school, social study class this strategy showed a higher metamemory or metacognitive skills.
1. Memory strategies: are strategies that develop our encoding and retrieval.
Memory strategies are related to repetition. Mnemonics Using Imagery is when we try to visualize something that is not physically there. Visual imagery is effective when the items to be recalled are interacting with each other. Another method in mnemonics is Keyword method; this method uses the link between similar sounding words, old and new words. The old one helps recall the new. The Loci method is a method where we associate the physical locations of the items to be recalled.
Mnemonics Using Organization: retrieving materials we learn is much easier if we have them in an organized manner. There are four techniques to organize mnemonics: a. Chunking
b. Hierarchy c. First-letter Technique d. Narrative Technique.
The next approach to memory improvement is the comprehensive approach that is health, mental condition, getting enough sleep.
Metacognition is what we know about our cognitive process. Metamemory is what we know about our memory, we can predict on how many items we recall from a given list of items. The chapter also talks about the difficulties we might have about our metamemory on concepts rather than recalling list of words. Our knowledge about what affects our memory plays an important role in our quest for the best memory strategy. Ch-13 focuses on children’s memory as early as two days old. It starts with recognizing mother and goes on with conjugate reinforcement in infants, children’s working memory, long-term memory; it concludes that children’s recognition skills way better than recall skills.
Metacognition in children: children have no idea on how their memory works. It emphasizes that how important it is to get children understand “realizing the necessity of effort “. That is to assist them to realize in working on the materials they couldn’t remember rather than repeating the materials they can already remember.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time. Memory strategies builds on the concept I have learned so far, once I know what working-memory and long-term memory are, then this two chapters help me better utilize these memories with the idea of metacognition and metamemory in mind. Memory strategy relies on perception, attention, and consciousness and in the end metamemory and metacognition; if we organize how we learn what materials we remember in what circumstances then our memory improves and ultimately store information in the long-term memory.
3. What am I still not clear on?
According to the text, people can predict which items they recall, but it also says that there exists metamemory inaccuracy that is over estimating how much we remember. How do we assess our metamemory accuracy without making mistakes on exam?
4. How would I apply to my own teaching/work?
Most of the work I do involves concepts rather than basic level of recalling items. I can use rehearse the task over and over again to recall for next time. Challenge trainees to assess how they learn best and practice the method for all upcoming training.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The author provides several studies to proof point. The author provides “classic research” on Metamemory on an item-by-item basis; she did not present a non-classic study to support her claim that this actually is classic study. The author assumes that readers already know about several psychology studies.
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It is very important in terms of teaching how to use memory strategies to retain information from grade-school level to college-level. I believe if we train children as early as middle school on how to organize their memory and in the end metamemory and metacognition, it could help college students struggle less. The question is will there be enough time to integrate learning materials and metamemory skills?
7. When would I actually use this-under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I would definitely use this with students with no knowledge of how they recall and how they learn. I would first give part of the first material and then challenge the students to come up with their own way of mastering the material according to their individual metamemory assessments.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
It would be very nice there were some case-studies on specific classes such as language learning, math and science; where these strategies can be used and actually got results. For example case-studies such as in such and such school, social study class this strategy showed a higher metamemory or metacognitive skills.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Chapter 5 (Long-term memory)
I. Summery and Reflection for chapter5 (Long-term memory)
Long-term memory has 3 forms. Episodic memory: memories that happened to you and let us go back in time to experience earlier episodes. Semantic memory: arranged knowledge about the world, words and factual information. Procedural memory: our knowledge about practical applications.
There 3 aspects of long-term memory
1.Encoding
2.Retrieval
3.Autobiographical memory (events and topics related to our own everyday life)
Encoding: how do we remember items that we processed; materials we processed in depth or materials we processed in shallow manner? Items we process in depth resulted in permanent retention of information than the later (depth-of-processing approach).
Deep levels of processing:
1. Distinctiveness : we use deep processing to identify a stimulus’s differences from other memory traces
2. Elaboration: we use deep processing in terms of meaning and interconnected concepts
Encoding Specificity: we recall much better if the context in the encoding and retrieval context match
Emotions mood and memory
Emotion is reaction to a specific stimulus, mood is long lasting experience. Cognitive physiologists recognize that emotion and mood control our cognitive processes. We normally remember enjoyable stimuli than other stimuli. We also remember much better if our mood and nature of the information matches.
Retrieval: how accurate can we retrieve information that was Encoded? There are two groups of retrieval tasks; implicit and explicit tasks. Explicit memory task, we intentionally prepare ourselves to recall information that we learn before the task or test. Whereas in implicit memory, there is no intention of remembering the material learned before, in fact the test/task is not related to previous learnt material.
Autobiographical Memory: memory for events related to yourself. It also consists of images about the events, emotional reaction, and procedural information. Flashbulb memories: memories that we first learned about an unexpected and emotionally affecting event. How we remember the shocking event in detail; the imagery of surrounding, what the people look like during the event, and how we react to it.
Recovered memory and false-memory: people who had experienced childhood abuse recall memories about the abuse as “recovered memory”. False memory suggests that most of the recovered memories are created memories about events that never happened.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time.
3. What am I still not clear on?
So what can we conclude about recovered-memory and false memory? The book concludes that both perspectives are partially correct, but can we generalize that childhood “bad” memories can be recovered and they are believable? How about false memory, what about an individual who was guided into believing that he was abused?
4. How would I apply this to my own teaching/work?
I think that when teaching concepts from previous course or grade the implicit memory can be used by just simply providing students with some materials without mentioning what people are expected to recall. For example if you place an individual who had forgotten the word “driving” due to some head injuries and if you place him/her behind the wheel he might be able to drive using implicit memory cognitive task. This can also be applied for technical courses; students who may not remember the names of parts of a computer or a machine and are placed on the practical environment they might remember how to work on that machine.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The author supports her claim with laboratory based research on false memory where we create words or events that never happened and PET scans with other research techniques, have not conclusively put that correct and incorrect recall of abuse. It would make it more believable if it was supported with the details of the research, with questions like the group that they perform the PET scan, were they actually abused or random group of people? On the Factors Affecting the accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony, the author did not provide specific research conducted on why and how memory errors occur. The 4 factors mentioned lack detailed research evidences. It would be nice if research studies were mentioned to make me a believer. I believe the eye witness testimony I believe most of the author’s cases, how many people are in jail because of an eye witness error these days?
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It is important because long-term memory plays an important role in cognitive tasks in education and training. Long-term memory is where we want to store when we learn new materials so that they can be applied in so many applications and cognitive tasks in life, such as reading, operating machinery, using a computer and so on. Long term memory is where we want to store our useful information from the past and present.
7. When would I actually use this-under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I would use this long-term memory information I learned, I would take all the theories mentioned into consideration when planning lessons and training. For example, how do we retrieve information from the past? What triggers those memories? So when planning a lesson I would think of current events where students can relate their individual experiences that can be applied to the current cognitive task?
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I think that we should plan a lesson for students using implicit memory and see what students can come up with. For example the game we designed can be a good example for implicit memory task that does not directly pressure students to remember specific concepts.
Long-term memory has 3 forms. Episodic memory: memories that happened to you and let us go back in time to experience earlier episodes. Semantic memory: arranged knowledge about the world, words and factual information. Procedural memory: our knowledge about practical applications.
There 3 aspects of long-term memory
1.Encoding
2.Retrieval
3.Autobiographical memory (events and topics related to our own everyday life)
Encoding: how do we remember items that we processed; materials we processed in depth or materials we processed in shallow manner? Items we process in depth resulted in permanent retention of information than the later (depth-of-processing approach).
Deep levels of processing:
1. Distinctiveness : we use deep processing to identify a stimulus’s differences from other memory traces
2. Elaboration: we use deep processing in terms of meaning and interconnected concepts
Encoding Specificity: we recall much better if the context in the encoding and retrieval context match
Emotions mood and memory
Emotion is reaction to a specific stimulus, mood is long lasting experience. Cognitive physiologists recognize that emotion and mood control our cognitive processes. We normally remember enjoyable stimuli than other stimuli. We also remember much better if our mood and nature of the information matches.
Retrieval: how accurate can we retrieve information that was Encoded? There are two groups of retrieval tasks; implicit and explicit tasks. Explicit memory task, we intentionally prepare ourselves to recall information that we learn before the task or test. Whereas in implicit memory, there is no intention of remembering the material learned before, in fact the test/task is not related to previous learnt material.
Autobiographical Memory: memory for events related to yourself. It also consists of images about the events, emotional reaction, and procedural information. Flashbulb memories: memories that we first learned about an unexpected and emotionally affecting event. How we remember the shocking event in detail; the imagery of surrounding, what the people look like during the event, and how we react to it.
Recovered memory and false-memory: people who had experienced childhood abuse recall memories about the abuse as “recovered memory”. False memory suggests that most of the recovered memories are created memories about events that never happened.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory. This chapter emphasizes about long-term memory opposite to working memory, when I learned about short-term memory that is a temporary storage for what my brain is working on current events but in case of long-term memory, it composes the experiences, events and information that we have stored over life time.
3. What am I still not clear on?
So what can we conclude about recovered-memory and false memory? The book concludes that both perspectives are partially correct, but can we generalize that childhood “bad” memories can be recovered and they are believable? How about false memory, what about an individual who was guided into believing that he was abused?
4. How would I apply this to my own teaching/work?
I think that when teaching concepts from previous course or grade the implicit memory can be used by just simply providing students with some materials without mentioning what people are expected to recall. For example if you place an individual who had forgotten the word “driving” due to some head injuries and if you place him/her behind the wheel he might be able to drive using implicit memory cognitive task. This can also be applied for technical courses; students who may not remember the names of parts of a computer or a machine and are placed on the practical environment they might remember how to work on that machine.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The author supports her claim with laboratory based research on false memory where we create words or events that never happened and PET scans with other research techniques, have not conclusively put that correct and incorrect recall of abuse. It would make it more believable if it was supported with the details of the research, with questions like the group that they perform the PET scan, were they actually abused or random group of people? On the Factors Affecting the accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony, the author did not provide specific research conducted on why and how memory errors occur. The 4 factors mentioned lack detailed research evidences. It would be nice if research studies were mentioned to make me a believer. I believe the eye witness testimony I believe most of the author’s cases, how many people are in jail because of an eye witness error these days?
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It is important because long-term memory plays an important role in cognitive tasks in education and training. Long-term memory is where we want to store when we learn new materials so that they can be applied in so many applications and cognitive tasks in life, such as reading, operating machinery, using a computer and so on. Long term memory is where we want to store our useful information from the past and present.
7. When would I actually use this-under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I would use this long-term memory information I learned, I would take all the theories mentioned into consideration when planning lessons and training. For example, how do we retrieve information from the past? What triggers those memories? So when planning a lesson I would think of current events where students can relate their individual experiences that can be applied to the current cognitive task?
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I think that we should plan a lesson for students using implicit memory and see what students can come up with. For example the game we designed can be a good example for implicit memory task that does not directly pressure students to remember specific concepts.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Chapter 4 (working memory)
Chapter 4 summery and Reflection
1.Summery
George Miller’s “Magical Number seven”; people can remember between 5 and 9 items. The Miller’s article suggested that the items can be a letter or a number.
In the Brown/Peterson and Peterson technique, people forget materials that were held in the memory less than a minute. In another technique, Recency effect, we recall items that appear at the end of a list. Serial position effect is the relationship between the position of a word and the probability to recall the word. So the way to measure short-term memory is to tally the number of words/items recalled at the end of a list.
Baddeley proposed Working-memory approach that is a working memory is a temporary location where we hold and manage information when cognitive tasks are executed.
Phonological Loop: the sound related section of working memory for a short period of time. It then explains different aspects of Phonological loop based on research studies. Acoustic confusion is when we might confuse similar sounding stimuli. Visuospatial Sketchpad is another model of Baddeley’s working memory that store visual information that has been encoded from verbal stimuli.
In Brandimonte study, acoustic coding when using sketchpad interfered with the amount of items we store in our working memory. Participants in her study were able to remember more when visual coding was used. Central Executive working memory model incorporates phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. In short Central executive is a model where the working memory decides what is relevant to the received information, prioritize tasks and pay attention to information with the highest importance. Episodic Buffer is a temporary space that includes the visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop and long-term memory to interpret and explain new events.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
I think it adds to the information we learned in the last 2 chapters. At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory.
3. What am I still not clear on?
I think that Central Executive and Episodic Buffer should be under the same working memory model. Central Executive uses long-term memory to make decisions from my understanding; both share similar models except the long-term memory which I think both utilize but in the book it does not include long-term memory in Central executive.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
It is difficult at this point to apply the concepts here at work. I think the studies and concepts the author gives are basic, it gives an understanding of working/short-term memory and how it works, it would give us an idea why our students/trainees have hard time remembering materials we talked about 20min ago. In Semantic Similarity of the items in working memory research: Proactive interference (PI) caught my attention to apply when a scenario like the following occurs. It gives an idea on why students do not accept new information when there is conflicting information in their long-term memory.
When I was showing how to use flash drive at a community college to adult learners and freshman students, most of the class had a prior knowledge of accessing the files in a flash drive. The knowledge is first open the application then click on file and select the drive. My lesson suggested they open it from My computer and double click on G or F drive based on the number of drives each machine have. I explained to them that if we want a quick access without opening the application we can get to it from My computer as well as check to see if our computer is reading the Drive correctly.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
On some of the ideas the author offer I agree and on some I don’t. For example I agree on the “acoustically similar” study; on Wickelgren study the author offer with phonological loop that people cannot recall the last letter or word they would pick a similar sounding letter or word to substitute them. As I mentioned above, I don’t quite agree with separating the idea of Central Executive model and Episodic Buffer. In addition to that when the author did not quite explain the research methods used except on some of them, age group of the participants, sampling method and so on; it just says classic research and the name of the researcher. An example for a “good” description of research method and description is on Maria Brandimonte’s study in Visual coding in working memory.
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It explains why we don’t remember if we only had a certain information for less than a minute. It explain that working memory is like a scratch paper we work on it for a short while and it goes away if we don’t repeat the task after the first time.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I think working memory is used every where around us during training/teaching any subject. When preparing lessons/workshops I would design the workshop in such a way that students have less confusion when to use visual coding and acoustic coding.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
It would be good to include recent studies or specific targets such as elementary education, High school and college level so we would have a better idea of how memory or other cognitive processes work with different age groups.
1.Summery
George Miller’s “Magical Number seven”; people can remember between 5 and 9 items. The Miller’s article suggested that the items can be a letter or a number.
In the Brown/Peterson and Peterson technique, people forget materials that were held in the memory less than a minute. In another technique, Recency effect, we recall items that appear at the end of a list. Serial position effect is the relationship between the position of a word and the probability to recall the word. So the way to measure short-term memory is to tally the number of words/items recalled at the end of a list.
Baddeley proposed Working-memory approach that is a working memory is a temporary location where we hold and manage information when cognitive tasks are executed.
Phonological Loop: the sound related section of working memory for a short period of time. It then explains different aspects of Phonological loop based on research studies. Acoustic confusion is when we might confuse similar sounding stimuli. Visuospatial Sketchpad is another model of Baddeley’s working memory that store visual information that has been encoded from verbal stimuli.
In Brandimonte study, acoustic coding when using sketchpad interfered with the amount of items we store in our working memory. Participants in her study were able to remember more when visual coding was used. Central Executive working memory model incorporates phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. In short Central executive is a model where the working memory decides what is relevant to the received information, prioritize tasks and pay attention to information with the highest importance. Episodic Buffer is a temporary space that includes the visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop and long-term memory to interpret and explain new events.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
I think it adds to the information we learned in the last 2 chapters. At first it was how we perceive objects we see, sounds we hear, on the next chapter after that, we looked at how cognitive tasks attention and consciousness in relation to cognitive processes. This chapter extends to another part of cognitive process with bounded ability of our cognitive process in limited memory called Working memory.
3. What am I still not clear on?
I think that Central Executive and Episodic Buffer should be under the same working memory model. Central Executive uses long-term memory to make decisions from my understanding; both share similar models except the long-term memory which I think both utilize but in the book it does not include long-term memory in Central executive.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
It is difficult at this point to apply the concepts here at work. I think the studies and concepts the author gives are basic, it gives an understanding of working/short-term memory and how it works, it would give us an idea why our students/trainees have hard time remembering materials we talked about 20min ago. In Semantic Similarity of the items in working memory research: Proactive interference (PI) caught my attention to apply when a scenario like the following occurs. It gives an idea on why students do not accept new information when there is conflicting information in their long-term memory.
When I was showing how to use flash drive at a community college to adult learners and freshman students, most of the class had a prior knowledge of accessing the files in a flash drive. The knowledge is first open the application then click on file and select the drive. My lesson suggested they open it from My computer and double click on G or F drive based on the number of drives each machine have. I explained to them that if we want a quick access without opening the application we can get to it from My computer as well as check to see if our computer is reading the Drive correctly.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
On some of the ideas the author offer I agree and on some I don’t. For example I agree on the “acoustically similar” study; on Wickelgren study the author offer with phonological loop that people cannot recall the last letter or word they would pick a similar sounding letter or word to substitute them. As I mentioned above, I don’t quite agree with separating the idea of Central Executive model and Episodic Buffer. In addition to that when the author did not quite explain the research methods used except on some of them, age group of the participants, sampling method and so on; it just says classic research and the name of the researcher. An example for a “good” description of research method and description is on Maria Brandimonte’s study in Visual coding in working memory.
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
It explains why we don’t remember if we only had a certain information for less than a minute. It explain that working memory is like a scratch paper we work on it for a short while and it goes away if we don’t repeat the task after the first time.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I think working memory is used every where around us during training/teaching any subject. When preparing lessons/workshops I would design the workshop in such a way that students have less confusion when to use visual coding and acoustic coding.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
It would be good to include recent studies or specific targets such as elementary education, High school and college level so we would have a better idea of how memory or other cognitive processes work with different age groups.
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