Memory Improvement

Memory Improvement

1. Retrieval cues

   • Acts as trigger recall
   • External (context dependent)
     • The physical environment in which materials learnt can affect memory and research indicates that context dependent cues facilitate recall
     • Abernethy(1940) tested particicpants' recall using a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar instructors and teaching rooms.Participants tested by a familiar instructor in a familiar room performed best, suggesting familiar external cues are useful in imporving recall
   • Internal (state-dependent)
     • Individual's pyhsiological state can affect their memory.
     • Overton(1972) got participants to learn material when either drunk or sober and found that material was recalled best when participants were the same internal state(drunk/sober) as when they encoded info.

2. Chunking

   • Grouping seperate bits of info into larger chunks.
   • Simon (1974) found that the size of chunks had an effect on recall. Participants recalled more small chunks with fewer amounts of items within them than large chunks with greater amounts of items within them
   • Chunking is an effective learning strategy for those learning and recalling lots of information

3. Mnemonics

   • organising information in some way.
   • Visual imagery mnemoincs
     • Focuses on visual images, such as a familar route through the rooms of a house,whereby objects to be recalled are placed in each rooms.
   • Verbal mnemonics
     • Focuses on words.Using acronym whereby the information to be recalled is formed from the letters of other words
   • Bower and Clarke (1969) found that participants who used narrative stories to help recall lists of nouns in the correct order remembered 93% compared to 13% for participants not using stories.
   • Visual imagery mnemonics often only work when trying to learn and recall actual objects rather than abstract concepts and ideas

4. Active processing

   • Procedures in which a learner goes beyond mere passive, unthinking encoding of information and instead subjects material to deep and meaningful processing
   • Craik and Lockheart(1972) found that if participants analysed matericalby its meaning (semantics), recall was superior suggesting that semantic processing draws upon many varied associations withing LTM.
   • dynamic theory,seeing memory as a process, not a set of passive stores. It provides meaningful associations between memory and other cognitive areas.