MEMORY

MEMORY

Memory is the retention of information over lime. [Educational psychologists study how information is initially placed or encoded into memory, how it is retained or stored after being encoded, and how it is found or retrieved for a certain purpose later. Today, educational psychologists emphasize that it is important not to view memory in terms of how chil­dren add something to it but, rather, to underscore how children actively construct their memory (Schacter, 2001).

The main body of our discussion of memory will focus on encoding, storage, and re­trieval. Encoding is the process by which information gels into mem­ory. Storage is the retention of information over time. Retrieval means taking informa­tion out of storage. Let's now explore each of these three important memory activities in greater detail.

Encoding

In everyday language, encoding has much in common with attention and learning. When a student is listening to a teacher, watching a movie, listening to music, or talking with a friend, he or she is encoding information into memory. Six concepts related to encoding are attention, rehearsal, deep processing, elaboration, constructing images, and organization.

Attention: concentrating and focusing mental resources.

Rehearsal: The concious repetition of information over time to increase the length of time information stays in memory.

Deep Processing Following the discovery that rehearsal is not an efficient way to en­code information for long-term memory.  Fergus Craik and Robert Lockharl (1972) proposed that we can process information at a variety of levels. Their theory, levels of processing theory, states that the processing of memory occurs on a continuum from shallow to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory. The sensory, or physical, features of stimuli are analyzed first at a shallow level. This might involve detect­ing the lines, angles, and contours of a printed word's letters or a spoken word's frequency, duration, and loudness. At an intermediate level of processing, the stimulus is recognized and given a label. Then, at the deepest level, infor­mation is processed semantically, in terms of its meaning. Researchers have found that individuals remember infor­mation better when they process it at a deeper level (Otten, Henson, & Kugg, 2001).

Elaboration: The extensiveness of information processing involves in encoding.

Constructing images: Allan Paivio believes that memories are stored in one of two ways: as a verbal code or as an image code. Paivio says that the more detailed and distinctive and image code, the better you memory of the information will be.

Organization: The more you present information in an organized way, the easier your students will remember it. This is especially true if you organize information hierarchically or outline it Also, if you simply encourage students to organize information, they often will re­member it belter than if you give them no instructions about organizing (Mandler, 1980). Chunking is a beneficial organizational memory strategy that involves grouping, or "packing," information into "higher-order" units that can be remembered as single units. Chunking works by making large amounts of information more manageable and more meaningful.

Storage

After children encode information, ihey need to retain, or store, the information. Among the most prominent aspects of memory storage are the three main stores, which corre­spond to three different time frames: sensory memory, working (or short-term) mem­ory, and long-term memory.

Memory's Time Frames Children remember some information for less than a sec­ond, some for about half a minute, and other information for minutes, hours, years, even a lifetime. The three types of memory that vary according to their time frames are sensory memory (which lasts a fraction of a second to several seconds!; short-term memory (also called working memory; lasts about 30 seconds), and long-term memory (which lasts up to a lifetime).

Sensory Memory Sensory memory holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant, not much longer than the brief time a student is ex­posed to the visual, auditory, and other sensations.

Students haw a sensory memory for sounds for up to several seconds, sort of like a brief echo. However, their sensory memory for visual images lasts only for about one-fourth of a second. Because sensory information lasts for only a fleeting moment, an im­portant (ask for the student is to attend to the sensory information that is important for learning.

Short-Term Memory Short-term memory is a limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained for as long as 30 seconds, unless the information is re­hearsed or otherwise processed further, in which case it can be retained longer. Com­pared with sensory memory, short-term memory is limited in capacity but relatively longer in duration. Its limited capacity intrigued George Miller (1956), who described this in a paper with a catchy title: "The Magical Number Seven. Plus or Minus Two." Miller pointed out that on many tasks, students are limited in how much information they can keep track of without external aids. Usually the limit is in the range of 7 ± 2 items.