Hacking your memory

what did Sana, Weston and Cepeda (2013) find about distraction in class?

students multitasking on a laptop during class may learn 11% less (it may also affect the comprehension of students around them)

what did the Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) study find?

taking notes on a laptop is faster but encourages verbatim notes rather than summary (this is ‘shallow’ processing)

what did Wong and Lim (2023) find about mind-wandering?

note-taking is useful in preventing mind-wandering

what is elaboration?

actively relating incoming material to existing knowledge (usually implies a deliberate strategy)

what is elaborative interrogation?

generating an explanation for why an explicitly stated fact or concept is true

what is self-explanation?

explaining how new info is related to known info or explaining steps taken during problem-solving

what is a keyword mnemonic?

using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal materials (can involve explanation)

results of the van Kersteren et al. (2013) fMRI study

• found that the prefrontal cortex is involved in encoding memories that are related to be prior knowledge

• the hippocampus is more involved in encoding memories that are not related to prior knowledge

describe van Kesteren et al.’s (2018) study on schemas in education

• people had to encode (A-B) picture-word pairs

• memory test for A-B pairs

• encode new A-C pairs where relatedness of B to C varies

• final memory test (what they had inferred B-C relation)

results of van Kesteren et al.’s (2018) study on schemas in education

• associative memory was better for inferred B-C pairing if it was schema-congruent

what are self-generated cues?

cues that are created with your personal knowledge and cognitive context

summarise Thomas et al. (2020)

• quizzing/testing is more effective at encoding memories than studying

• showed transfer to conceptually-related material and different test formats

• supports the idea that testing aids concept development and generalisation from learning episode (semantic) as well as memory for instances (episodic)

what are the theories of the testing effect?

• semantic elaboration (Carpenter, 2009)

• context theory (Karpicke et al., 2014)

what is spaced learning?

revisiting info after a break (this helps memory)

describe the study by Conway et al. (1997)

• tested students immediately after a lecture and in a delayed test

• immediately after lectures, better performing students ‘remember facts in a particular lecture’

• at the delayed test, students ‘knew the facts’ rather than ‘remembered the lecture’

• suggests a shift from episodic to semantic memory and generalisation beyond initial context