Long-Term Memory Pt. 1: encoding, retrieval, metacognition

What is encoding?

getting material into long-term memory

What are the most effective methods of encoding?

Self-relevant, self generation, and depth of processing are best methods

What is depth of processing?

it is when you try to understand or focus on the meaning of the thing rather than just knowing what it is (i.e. definition)→ it will lead to better encoding

What 2 assumptions did Craike and Lockhart make about memory/encoding?

1. memory is a byproduct from you just trying to understand the world

2. deeper processing would result in more memory

How did Craike and Tulving study depth of processing and how does it support levels of processing? (tell me about the experiment design: procedure, independent variable, dependent variable, and conclusions)

The experiment: they had people read a sentence and then would ask them to make a decision about a word within the sentence; they would ask either a rhyming or a meaning question like: did the word rhyme with dog or a fill in the blank, like does dog make sense in that gap for the sentence. This was phase 1, it was a orienting task and the people had no idea that there would be a memory test, they were just making them think about the word how they wanted. Then phase 2, was a surprise memory recall test, and they looked at which group recalled the words they were manipulating them to think about the best. They found… That the group who had to find meaning, remembered the words better than the group who did shallow processing (i.e. rhyming)

What is the self-relevant effect?

When you connect information of stimuli to yourself, you will remember it better

What is the generation effect?

when you have to think of an example for yourself about something, or you connect it to something else you learned you found/made the connection yourself (when things are harder for you, you remember it better → desirable difficulty affect)

What was a demonstration we did that supported the self-relevant effect?

When we saw a list of words and there was three groups we either had to compare each word to whether we owned it, if it was smaller or bigger than grandma, or just looking, and the group that had to relate each word and decide if we owned it or not, remembered on average more words than the other groups

What is a demonstration we did that supported the self-generation effect?

when we had to come up with a word that fit into the blank for a word pair vs the word being given to us in word pairs

What is the desirable difficulty effect?

what is hard for the brain is good for memory, i.e. when you have to put in more effort you will remember it longer

What is retrieval?

accessing/getting to the memory

What is the role of retrieval cues?

they are pieces of info that are provided to help get to a memory

What makes a good retrieval cue?

the more information given that was there at the time of encoding, the more effective of a cue it is (i.e. matching contexts: what, where, and how)

How does recognition vs recall prove this? What is an example we did of this?

• Recognition: you just have to say if it is right or not (easier)

• Recall: you have to provide the info yourself (harder)

Example we did of this was with Arkansas and the capital, coming up with the capital was harder, not a lot of people were able to, but choosing the capital from a list of options was easier, more people were able to

What is the role of context matching in effective retrieval (encoding specificity)?

the more similar the encoding conditions to the retrieval conditions, the easier/better it will be for memory recall

What is “what” context? How does this play out in test questions? why is smell important?

it is content or “what” you encoded, the actual information; this plays out in test questions because if teacher uses same words used in question that she used to teach the concept, than the “what” retrieval cue is the same; smell is important because the olfactory bulb in brain sits next to hippocampus and amygdala which are involved in memory and emotion, so smells can also invoke those things

What is “where” context matching?

where context is that the location that you encoded and retrieved are the same, i.e. the classroom

What is the scuba diving study and how did it show the importance of the where context? What did the participants do and what were the findings? Be able to fill out a 2×2 table that demonstrates the importance of its logic

Scuba diving study had participants either study on land or in water and then they took a test either in land or water. the groups that had the two matching, either land and land or water and water, performed better on the test than the groups that mismatched land/water or vice versa.

What is “How” context matching?

“how” context is how you think about the material at encoding matching how you think about it at retrieval (state of mind when you study)

How is the mental/how context important? How does the drunk study show this? What did the participants do and what is the finding? Be able to fill out a 2×2 table for this and understand the importance of its logic

Drunk study shows this because they had people either be drunk for studying or sober, and then had them take a test either drunk or sober, again the two matched conditions either sober/sober or drunk/drunk performed better than the sober/drunk groups

Is deeper processing always better or does how we think about the material at encoding need to match retrieval?

NO! how you think about material at encoding should match how you will need to think about it at retrieval, i.e. if you are going to take a rhyming test you should think about it in a rhyming context

How did morris, Bransford, and Franks compare the “how matching” vs “deeper processing” idea

they did a study that was the same set up as the craick and tulvig study, except they had a third part to it, instead of giving everyone the same type of test (recall, just see how many words they could remember) they had a meaning test (recall) and a rhyming test (i.e. did one of the words you had rhyme with log) based on how you were presented the words in phase 1 (meaning or rhyming). They found that how you are tested matters more for how you should study than just deeply studying always being best

What is metacognition?

the ability to monitor your learning and making adjustments if you need to

What is monitoring?

assessing your understanding (memory) of learning

What is control?

changes you make to adjust your learning

When do we monitor and what kind of questions do you ask?

we monitory always when we are taking in new information, you ask yourself where you could explain it to someone else/teach it, could you pause during lecture and see if you understand everything that was just said

How do we control our learning? (what, duration, how)

we control our learning by focusing on what to study: is it the hard stuff, the easy stuff, the stuff worth more points, etc., we control how long we study for and we control what strategies we choose to use for studying

What is distributive practice?

when you space out your studying far apart so that your brain almost forgets the material and perceives it as learning it in two different instances

What is retrieval practice?

it is when you test yourself, you try to recall the information