AP PSYCH 5.2 Encoding

Types of Processing

Shallow Processing

  • A type of processing that requires little elaboration
  • Focusing on superficial and/or perceptual events
  • Leads to shorter retention times
  • Like encoding a word based on the font it was typed in   * Uses surface features without speculating upon them

Deep Processing

  • Focusing on the meaning with deeper elaboration
  • Leads to longer retention times
  • When encoding, the information is contemplated and features beyond the immediate sense-able ones are thought of   * Memories with more detail are retrieved better, even if some of the details don’t survive
  • Also involves connecting information to previous learning   * Connecting memories to preexisting ones also aids in retrieval

Types of Encoding

Visual

  • Encoding based on visual stimulus
  • Like encoding based on a word that is both italicized and colored red

Acoustic

  • Encoding based on auditory stimulus
  • Rhyming
  • Advertisement jingles

Semantic

  • Encoding based on meaning
  • Leads to the best retention
  • This is most commonly used in deep processing

Phenomena

Spacing Effects

Massed Practice
  • Trying to encode everything at once
  • Like cramming the night before a test
  • Leads to poor retention
Distributed Practice
  • Encoding over multiple time periods
  • The more time given, the better retention
Spacing Effect
  • The principle that distributed practice lends itself to long term retention
Testing Effect
  • Retrieving information is more powerful than restudying and rereading
  • Practice tests are a more effective method of studying than just going over notes
  • This makes you strengthen the retrieval pathway and neural connections, which will aid on the real test
  • When you reread notes, you aren’t having to retrieve to strengthen anything

Order Effects

Serial Position Effect
  • The items that comes first and last in a list are remembered best
  • Relates to the recency effect
Recency Effect
  • Items you have just reviewed are remembered best
  • This could because they just recently passed through the working memory
Primacy Effect
  • The first items in a list are remembered best in the long term

Organizing Effects

Chunking
  • Clustering items into units
  • Especially useful if the chunk has a meaning   * Remembering a phone number can become easier when you break it into three parts   * You may only need two parts if the area code is one you know well
Mnemonics
  • Memory devices
  • Often use association or imagery
  • Key-word method, peg word method, method of loci
Hierarchies
  • Creating categories with subdivisions

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