Enhancing encoding

Question 1

What different ways are there of looking at memory?

Answer 1

• types of research (lab/everyday memory)
• types of task (explicit/implicit)
• types of process (encoding/storage/retrieval)

Question 2

According to Searlemann and Herrmann (1994), what are the historical types of memory research?

Answer 2

1. Pragmatic
2. Experimental
3. Atheoretical
4. Theoretical

Question 3

Describe the pragmatic memory research type.

Answer 3

Practical - seeking ways to improve people’s ability to learn and remember.

Question 4

Describe the experimental memory research type.

Answer 4

Documenting the existence and nature of memory phenomena with observations that are systematically collected.

Question 5

Describe the atheoretical memory research type.

Answer 5

Characterising memory in an intuitive and informal manner, focusing on phenomena rather than explanation.

Question 6

Describe the theoretical memory research type.

Answer 6

Explaining the mechanisms of memory with theories, models, or metaphors that capture part of a phenomenon.

Question 7

How was memory studied in the 4th Century BC?

Answer 7

Theoretically - Plato and Aristotle described memory metaphors - wax tablet, aviary, scribe.

Question 8

What did Aristotle’s Laws of Association state, and what kind of research was it?

Answer 8

Which things are remembered together, atheoretical.

Question 9

Give two historical examples of pragmatic memory research.

Answer 9

Cicero’s memory techniques, such as the Method of Loci.

The use of rhyme as a memory tool in the dark ages.

Question 10

Give a historical example of theoretical research.

Answer 10

16th Century revival of theoretical interest - Bacon, Locke, Hume, Kant, and Mill on ideas etc.

Question 11

What did Ebbinghaus change?

Answer 11

After Ebbinghaus, the way people thought about memory and the way it was studied changed dramatically.

Question 12

What kind of method did Ebbinghaus use?

Answer 12

Experimental and atheoretical - systematic observations of memory.

Question 13

What was Ebbinghaus’ fundamental unit of memory?

Answer 13

The nonsense syllable (attempt to circumvent the effect of memory!)

Question 14

Define Ebbinghaus’ method of complete mastery.

Answer 14

Measure of how long it took to learn a list well enough to repeat it perfectly on two occasions.

Question 15

Define Ebbinghaus’ method of savings.

Answer 15

Measure of retention - how much less time it took to relearn a list.

Question 16

What were Ebbinghaus’ 4 key findings?

Answer 16

1. Forgetting function
2. Learning function
3. List difficulty increases disproportionately with length
4. Massed vs. Distributed practice effects

Question 17

What is plotted on Ebbinghaus’ most famous finding, the forgetting function?

Answer 17

Retention interval and savings.

Question 18

Describe Ebbinghaus’ forgetting function.

Answer 18

Savings decrease over hours of delay, initially fast but then slower, approaching an asymptote like a power function.

Question 19

Describe Ebbinghaus’ learning function.

Answer 19

Similar shape to forgetting function - learning time decreases exponentially over days of practice.

Question 20

What did Ebbinghaus find regarding massed vs. distributed practice effects?

Answer 20

Massed practice is more effective in the short term (over less than one day you retain more, but long term retention is poorer) and there is less learning per hour encoding.

Question 21

What are the practical implications of Ebbinghaus’ findings regarding list length and difficulty?

Answer 21

As it increases disproportionately, learning twenty items is harder than two lists of ten.

Question 22

What did Baddeley and Longman (1978) find?

Answer 22

That the type of training (massed/distributed) for postmen to type postcodes affected their number of correct keystrokes over time as predicted by Ebbinghaus - massed practice was more effective at the start but less effective after a time interval.

Question 23

How does the fact that blocked lists are easier to learn than unblocked ones relate to Ebbinghaus’ findings?

Answer 23

List difficulty increases disproportionately with length - learning a blocked list is the equivalent difficulty of learning several short lists, learning one long list is much more difficult.

Question 24

What did Bower et al. (1969) find about encoding in context?

Answer 24

Words are learned four times faster if given an appropriate network of meanings - blocked lists.

Question 25

What theoretical structures exist in memory?

Answer 25

Context (Bransford and Johnson, 1972)
Schemata (Bartlett, 1932; Brewer and Treyens, 1981)
Scripts (Schank, 1982; Smith and Graesser, 1981)
Frames (Friedman, 1979; Minsky, 1975)

Question 26

What did Bransford and Johnson (1972) find?

Answer 26

When learning long texts, context before but not after (either as a picture or word, pictures more effective) improved learning, showing that context is acting as an encoding effect.

Question 27

What did Brewer and Treyens (1981) investigate?

Answer 27

Schematic memory for places - surprise memory test on office contents.

Question 28

What did Brewer and Treyens (1981) find?

Answer 28

Recall was predicted by schema expectancy (what should be in an office) and saliency (standing out). These are negatively correlated, creating problems with the idea of schemas - inconsistency.

Question 29

What did Smith and Graesser (1981) find?

Answer 29

When reading stories following general scripts containing both typical and atypical actions, the effect of better recall for typical information (particularly delayed recall) disappeared when guessing was controlled for, and showed that atypical items are remembered particularly well.

Question 30

What is the schema and tag hypothesis?

Answer 30

Remembered schema pointer guides recall, atypical tag helps recognition.

Question 31

How can encoding be enhanced?

Answer 31

• relating new information to old information - e.g. through mind maps (Buzan, 2010)
• revising by testing (Karpicke and Blunt, 2011)
• careful spreading of testing intervals - 10-20% of retention interval (Rohrer and Pashler, 2007)