Retaining Information in Shortterm Memory Simply by Repeating It Over and Over Again

At the end of a brightly lit hallway is a clear model of the human skull, allowing a pink and red model of the brain to show through

Memory is more than indelible than ink. ―Anita Loos, writer and screenwriter

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter, you volition be able to:

Identify and describe the three basic functions of memory
Differentiate between sensory, curt-term, and long-term retention
Identify and depict methods for information retrieval
Describe the forgetting curve and its implications for learning
Describe strategies for deciding which course content to learn and retain
Recognize and utilise strategies for strengthening your memory

Memory

Memory is an data processing system that we often compare to a figurer. Memory is the set of processes used to encode, shop, and retrieve information over different periods of time.

A diagram shows three boxes, placed in a row from left to right, respectively titled

ENCODING

Nosotros get data into our brains through a process chosen encoding, which is the input of data into the memory system. One time we receive sensory information from the environment, our brains label or code it. We organize the data with other similar information and connect new concepts to existing concepts. Encoding information occurs through both automatic processing and effortful processing.

If someone asks yous what you lot ate for lunch today, more than likely you could call up this information quite easily. This is known equally automated processing, or the encoding of details similar time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words. Automatic processing is ordinarily done without any witting awareness. Recalling the last time you studied for a test is another example of automatic processing. But what almost the actual test textile you studied? It probably required a lot of work and attending on your function in order to encode that information. This is known equally effortful processing.

Photo shows a girl with long hair driving a car. The sun shines in through the window behind her.

What are the most effective ways to ensure that important memories are well encoded? Fifty-fifty a simple sentence is easier to recall when it is meaningful (Anderson, 1984). Read the following sentences (Bransford & McCarrell, 1974), then look away and count backwards from xxx by threes to zero, and then try to write down the sentences (no peeking back at this page!).

The notes were sour because the seams split.
The voyage wasn't delayed because the bottle shattered.
The haystack was important because the cloth ripped.

How well did you practice? By themselves, the statements that you wrote down were most likely confusing and difficult for you to recall. At present, try writing them again, using the following prompts: bagpipe, ship christening, and parachutist. Next count backwards from 40 by fours, and so check yourself to see how well you recalled the sentences this time. Y'all tin can encounter that the sentences are now much more memorable because each of the sentences was placed in context. Material is far ameliorate encoded when you make it meaningful.

There are three types of encoding. The encoding of words and their meaning is known as semantic encoding. It was first demonstrated by William Bousfield (1935) in an experiment in which he asked people to memorize words. The 60 words were actually divided into iv categories of meaning, although the participants did not know this because the words were randomly presented. When they were asked to remember the words, they tended to recall them in categories, showing that they paid attending to the meanings of the words equally they learned them.

Visual encoding is the encoding of images, and acoustic encoding is the encoding of sounds, words in item. To run into how visual encoding works, read over this list of words: car, level, dog, truth, book, value. If you were asked later to recall the words from this list, which ones exercise yous think you'd most likely remember? You would probably have an easier time recalling the words machine, canis familiaris, and book, and a more than difficult fourth dimension recalling the words level, truth, and value. Why? Because yous can think images (mental pictures) more easily than words alone. When you read the words motorcar, dog, and book you created images of these things in your heed. These are concrete, loftier-imagery words. On the other mitt, abstract words similar level, truth, and value are low-imagery words. Loftier-imagery words are encoded both visually and semantically (Paivio, 1986), thus building a stronger memory.

At present let'southward turn our attending to acoustic encoding. You are driving in your machine and a song comes on the radio that you haven't heard in at least 10 years, simply you sing along, recalling every give-and-take. In the United States, children oftentimes learn the alphabet through song, and they larn the number of days in each calendar month through rhyme: "Thirty days hath September, / Apr, June, and Nov; / All the remainder have thirty-1, / Save Feb, with twenty-eight days clear, / And xx-nine each bound year." These lessons are easy to retrieve because of acoustic encoding. We encode the sounds the words make. This is i of the reasons why much of what we teach young children is done through song, rhyme, and rhythm.

Which of the three types of encoding do yous think would give you the all-time memory of verbal data? Some years ago, psychologists Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving (1975) conducted a serial of experiments to notice out. Participants were given words along with questions about them. The questions required the participants to process the words at one of the three levels. The visual processing questions included such things every bit asking the participants about the font of the letters. The acoustic processing questions asked the participants virtually the sound or rhyming of the words, and the semantic processing questions asked the participants about the pregnant of the words. Later participants were presented with the words and questions, they were given an unexpected recall or recognition job.

Words that had been encoded semantically were better remembered than those encoded visually or acoustically. Semantic encoding involves a deeper level of processing than the shallower visual or acoustic encoding. Craik and Tulving concluded that nosotros process verbal data all-time through semantic encoding, peculiarly if we apply what is called the self-reference consequence. The self-reference effect is the trend for an individual to have better retentivity for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance (Rogers, Kuiper & Kirker, 1977). Could semantic encoding be benign to y'all as you lot attempt to memorize the concepts in this chapter?

STORAGE

Once the information has been encoded, nosotros have to retain it. Our brains have the encoded information and place it in storage. Storage is the cosmos of a permanent record of data.

In club for a memory to go into storage (i.e., long-term retentivity), information technology has to pass through 3 distinct stages: Sensory Memory, Short-Term Memory, and finally Long-Term Memory. These stages were get-go proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968). Their model of human being memory, called Atkinson-Shiffrin (A-Due south), is based on the belief that we process memories in the same fashion that a calculator processes information.

A flow diagram consists of four boxes with connecting arrows. The first box is labeled

Sensory Memory

In the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, stimuli from the environment are processed commencement in sensory memory: storage of cursory sensory events, such as sights, sounds, and tastes. It is very brief storage—up to a couple of seconds. Nosotros are constantly bombarded with sensory information. We cannot absorb all of it, or even most of it. And most of it has no impact on our lives. For example, what was your professor wearing the concluding class menses? As long as the professor was dressed appropriately, it does not actually matter what she was wearing. Sensory data almost sights, sounds, smells, and even textures, which nosotros do not view as valuable information, we discard. If we view something equally valuable, the data will move into our short-term memory organisation.

One study of sensory retentivity researched the significance of valuable information on short-term retention storage. J. R. Stroop discovered a memory phenomenon in the 1930s: you volition name a colour more than easily if it appears printed in that color, which is called the Stroop effect. Try an experiment: name the colors of the words presented in the image below. Do not read the words, but say the color the word is printed in. For example, upon seeing the word "yellow" in green print, you should say "green," non "yellow." This experiment is fun, but it'south non equally easy every bit information technology seems.

Several names of colors appear in a font color that is different from the name of the color. For example, the word

Brusk-Term Retentiveness

Short-term retentivity is a temporary storage system that processes incoming sensory memory; sometimes it is called working memory. Short-term retentiveness takes data from sensory retention and sometimes connects that retentivity to something already in long-term memory. Short-term retentivity storage lasts about 20 seconds. Remember of short-term retentiveness as the information you accept displayed on your reckoner screen—a certificate, a spreadsheet, or a spider web page. Information in short-term retentiveness either goes to long-term retentivity (when you save information technology to your hard drive) or it is discarded (when yous delete a document or close a web browser).

You lot may find yourself asking, "How much data tin our memory handle at one time?" George Miller (1956), in his research on the capacity of retention, found that most people can retain almost 7 items in short-term memory. Some remember 5, some ix, and then he called the chapters of brusque-term memory the range of 7 items plus or minus 2. To explore the chapters and elapsing of your short-term retentiveness, have a partner read the strings of random numbers below out loud to you, showtime each string by saying, "Ready?" and ending each by maxim, "Recall," at which bespeak y'all should try to write downwardly the string of numbers from retentiveness.

A series of numbers includes two rows, with six numbers in each row. From left to right, the numbers increase from four digits to five, six, seven, eight, and nine digits. The first row includes

Notation the longest string at which you lot got the series correct. For well-nigh people, this will be close to seven, Miller's famous seven plus or minus 2. Retrieve is somewhat better for random numbers than for random letters (Jacobs, 1887), and also often slightly amend for information we hear (acoustic encoding) rather than see (visual encoding) (Anderson, 1969).

Long-term Memory

Long-term memory is the continuous storage of information. Dissimilar short-term retentivity, the storage capacity of long-term memory has no limits. It encompasses all the things you tin can recollect that happened more than just a few minutes agone to all of the things that you tin can recollect that happened days, weeks, and years ago. In keeping with the computer analogy, the data in your long-term retentivity would be like the information yous have saved on the hard drive. It isn't there on your desktop (your short-term memory), merely you tin pull upwardly this data when yous want it, at least nigh of the time. Not all long-term memories are strong memories. Some memories can only be recalled through prompts. For example, y'all might hands retrieve a fact— "What is the upper-case letter of the United States?"—or a process—"How do you lot ride a bike?"—but you might struggle to recall the proper noun of the restaurant yous had dinner when y'all were on vacation in France last summer. A prompt, such as that the eating house was named after its possessor, who spoke to you almost your shared interest in soccer, may help yous recall the name of the eatery.

RETRIEVAL

So you take worked hard to encode (via effortful processing) and shop some important information for your upcoming concluding test. How practise you get that information back out of storage when you demand it? The act of getting information out of retentiveness storage and back into conscious awareness is known as retrieval. This would be similar to finding and opening a paper you had previously saved on your computer's difficult drive. Now it'southward dorsum on your desktop, and yous can piece of work with it over again. Our ability to think data from long-term memory is vital to our everyday functioning. You lot must be able to call up information from memory in gild to do everything from knowing how to brush your hair and teeth, to driving to piece of work, to knowing how to perform your job in one case yous get at that place.

There are three ways you tin can remember information out of your long-term memory storage organisation: recall, recognition, and relearning. Recall is what nosotros most often think about when we talk well-nigh memory retrieval: it means you lot can admission information without cues. For instance, you would use call up for an essay examination. Recognition happens when you place information that you have previously learned after encountering it again. It involves a process of comparison. When you have a multiple-choice test, you are relying on recognition to help you choose the right answer. Here is another example. Allow's say you graduated from high school ten years ago, and you lot have returned to your hometown for your 10-year reunion. You may non exist able to recall all of your classmates, but you recognize many of them based on their yearbook photos.

The third form of retrieval is relearning, and it's just what it sounds like. Information technology involves learning information that you previously learned. Whitney took Castilian in high school, simply afterward high school she did not accept the opportunity to speak Spanish. Whitney is at present 31, and her company has offered her an opportunity to work in their Mexico City office. In gild to prepare herself, she enrolls in a Spanish course at the local community centre. She'southward surprised at how quickly she's able to pick up the language after not speaking information technology for 13 years; this is an example of relearning.

This video explores these functions of memory and provides boosted examples of how they work:

Forgetting

As we but learned, you brain must exercise some work (effortful processing) to encode data and move it into curt-term, and ultimately long-term retention. This has strong implications for you as a student, every bit it can bear on your learning – if you lot do not practise the work to encode and store information, you are likely to forget it altogether.

The forgetting curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention over fourth dimension. This curve shows how information is lost over time when there is no endeavor to retain it.

Graph with memory on the vertical axis and time remembered (days) on the horizontal axis.

In 1885, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus hypothesized that the rate of forgetting is exponential. Using himself equally the sole subject in his experiment, he memorized lists of 3 letter nonsense syllable words—2 consonants and one vowel in the heart. He so measured his own capacity to relearn a given list of words after a variety of given time flow. He found that forgetting occurs in a systematic manner, first rapidly then leveling off, represented graphically in the Ebbinghaus forgetting bend. From this enquiry Ebbinghaus concluded that much of what we forget is lost soon afterward it is originally learned, but that the corporeality of forgetting eventually levels off.

Enquiry indicates that people forget eighty percent of what they acquire only a day afterward.^[one] This statistic may not sound very encouraging, given all that you're expected to learn and remember as a college student. Actually, though, it points to the importance of a report strategy other than waiting until the night earlier a final exam to review a semester's worth of readings and notes. When you acquire something new, the goal is to "lock it in" sooner rather than later, and motion it from brusk-term retentivity to long-term memory, where information technology tin be accessed when you demand information technology (like at the end of the semester for your concluding exam or maybe years from now).

The next section volition explore a variety of strategies yous tin use to process data more deeply and help improve remember.

Knowledge Acquisition Strategies

Jennifer felt anxious about an upcoming history examination. This would be her first test in a college class, and she wanted to practise well. Jennifer took lots of notes during course and while reading the textbook. In preparation for the examination, she tried to review all five textbook chapters along with all of her notes.

The morn of the exam, Jennifer felt nervous and unprepared. After so much studying and review, why wasn't she more confident?

Knowing What to Know

Jennifer's state of affairs shows that there really is such a thing every bit studying too much. Her fault was in trying to chief all of the class material. Whether you lot take one or more than than one class, information technology's simply impossible to retain every unmarried particle of information you run into in a textbook or lecture. And, instructors don't generally give open up-book exams or permit their students to preview the quizzes or tests ahead of fourth dimension. So, how can yous decide what to report and "know what to know"? The answer is to prioritize what y'all're trying to learn and memorize, rather than trying to tackle all of it. Below are some strategies to help you do this.

Think about concepts rather than facts: From time to fourth dimension, you'll need to memorize cold, hard facts—like a list of math equations or a vocabulary list in a Spanish grade. Nearly of the time, though, instructors will care much more that you are learning near the fundamental concepts in a subject or form—such equally how photosynthesis works, how to write a thesis argument, the causes of the French Revolution, and and so on. Jennifer, from the scenario above, might have been more successful with her studying—and felt better about information technology—if she had focused on the important historical developments (the "big ideas") discussed in class, as opposed to trying to memorize a long list of dates and facts.
Take cues from your instructor: Pay attending to what your instructor writes on the board or includes in study guides and handouts. Although these may exist brusque—perhaps just a list of words and phrases—they are likely core concepts that you lot'll want to focus on. As well, instructors tend to refer to important concepts repeatedly during class, and they may even tell you what's important to know earlier an exam or other assessment.
Look for primal terms: Textbooks will often put key terms in bold or italics. These terms and their definitions are unremarkably important and can help you remember larger concepts.
Utilize summaries: Textbooks often have summaries or study guides at the terminate of each chapter. These summaries are a adept way to check in and run across whether you lot grasp the principal elements of the reading (each chapter of this text, for example, ends with a set of "key takeaways" that reiterate the nearly important concepts). If no summary is available, effort to write your own—you lot'll learn much more past writing near what you lot read than by reading alone.

Transferring Information to Long-Term Memory

In the previous word of how retentivity works, the importance of making intentional efforts to transfer data from curt-term to long-term memory was noted. Below are some strategies to facilitate this process:

Commencement reviewing new material immediately: Remember that people typically forget a significant corporeality of new information inside 24 hours of learning information technology. As a student, you can benefit from starting to study new material right away. If you're introduced to new concepts in form, for example, don't await a few days, or until the test is coming upwardly, to start reviewing your notes and doing the related reading consignment. The sooner the ameliorate! Studying notes and writing questions or comments most what you learned right subsequently course can aid keep new information fresh in your mind.
Report ofttimes for shorter periods of time: Once information becomes a office of long-term retention, y'all're more likely to remember it. If you want to improve the odds of recalling class material by the time of an exam or a in future class, try reviewing information technology a little flake every mean solar day. Building up your noesis and recall this way tin also aid y'all avert needing to "cram" and feeling overwhelmed by everything you may take forgotten.

Strengthening Your Memory

Nosotros've discussed the importance of zeroing in on the main concepts yous learn in class and of transferring them from short-term to long-term memory. Just how can you work to strengthen your overall memory? Some people have stronger memories than others, but memorizing new information takes piece of work for anyone. Below are some strategies that can assistance memory.

Rehearsal

One strategy is rehearsal, or the witting repetition of information to be remembered (Craik & Watkins, 1973). This strategy is linked to studying fabric oftentimes for shorter periods of fourth dimension. You may non call up when or how yous learned skills like riding a wheel or tying your shoes. Mastery came with practice, and at some bespeak the skills became 2nd nature. Academic learning is no unlike: if you lot spend enough time with important course concepts and practice them often, you volition know them in the same way you lot know how to ride a bicycle, almost without thinking about them. For example, think most how you learned your multiplication tables. You may retrieve that half-dozen 10 six = 36, half-dozen 10 seven = 42, and 6 x eight = 48. Memorizing these facts is rehearsal.

Comprise visuals

Visual aids like note cards, concept maps, and highlighted text are ways of making information stand out. Because they are shorter and more curtailed, they have the advantage of making the information to be memorized seem more manageable and less daunting (than an unabridged textbook affiliate, for example). Some students write central terms on note cards and hang them around their desk or mirror and so that they routinely encounter them and written report them without even trying.

Create mnemonics

Memory devices known every bit mnemonics tin assistance you retain information while but needing to call up a unique phrase or letter of the alphabet pattern that stands out. Mnemonic devices are memory aids that help us organize data for encoding. They are especially useful when we desire to recall larger bits of information such equally steps, stages, phases, and parts of a system (Bellezza, 1981).

There are unlike types of mnemonic devices, such as the acronym. An acronym is a word formed by the first alphabetic character of each of the words you want to remember. For case, even if you live near i, you might accept difficulty recalling the names of all v Great Lakes. What if I told y'all to think of the give-and-take Homes? HOMES is an acronym that represents Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior: the five Great Lakes.

Another blazon of mnemonic device is an acrostic: you lot make a phrase of all the offset letters of the words. For example, if you are taking a math test and y'all are having difficulty remembering the order of operations, recalling the sentence "Delight Excuse My Dear Aunt Emerge" will help you, because the order of mathematical operations is Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Improver, Subtraction. There also are jingles, which are rhyming tunes that incorporate central words related to the concept, such as "i before e, except after c."

You might use a mnemonic device to help you retrieve someone's name, a mathematical formula, or the six levels of Bloom'southward taxonomy.

A photograph shows a person's two hands clenched into fists so the knuckles show. The knuckles are labeled with the months and the number of days in each month, with the knuckle protrusions corresponding to the months with 31 days, and the indentations between knuckles corresponding to February and the months with 30 days.

Chunking

Some other strategy is chunking, where you organize information into manageable bits or chunks (Bodie, Powers, & Fitch-Hauser, 2006). Chunking is useful when trying to remember data like dates and phone numbers. Instead of trying to call up 5205550467, you remember the number equally 520-555-0467. And then, if y'all met an interesting person at a party and you wanted to think his phone number, you would naturally clamper it, and you could repeat the number over and over, combining the strategies of chunking and rehearsal.

Connect new information to old information

Take stock of what you already know—information that'southward already stored in long-term retentivity—and use it as a foundation for learning newer information. It's easier to remember new information if you tin connect it to quondam information or to a familiar frame of reference. For instance, if you are taking a sociology class and are learning about dissimilar types of social groups, you lot may exist able to think of examples from your ain experience that chronicle to the unlike types.

Go quality slumber

Although some people require more or less sleep than the recommended amount, most people should aim for six–eight hours every night. School puts a lot of demands on the brain, and, like tired muscles after a long conditioning, your encephalon needs to rest after being exercised and taking in all sorts of new information during the day. Plus, while you are sleeping, your brain is withal at work. During sleep the brain organizes and consolidates information to exist stored in long-term memory (Abel & Bäuml, 2013). A good nighttime's balance tin can help you remember more than and feel prepared for learning the next day.

Retentivity besides relies on constructive studying behaviors, similar choosing where you study, how you study, and with whom you report. The following video provides specific studying strategies that tin better your memory.

ACTIVITY: Strengthening Your Memory

Objectives

Recognize and apply strategies for strengthening your memory

Directions

We just reviewed six strategies you can apply to strengthen your retention. Yous may be asked to recall all six at a after time (perhaps on the test for this unit!) so you will want to remember them.
Listing each of these strategies and depict how you could use each one to help yourself recollect all six strategies for strengthening memory. Each strategy will telephone call for y'all to appoint with the information in a different way to assist think it.
Follow your instructor's guidelines for submitting your consignment.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Our memory has three basic functions: encoding, storing, and retrieving information.
The Atkinson-Shiffrin (A-South) model outlines 3 distinct stages of memory: sensory, brusque-term, and long-term.
Information stored in long-term retentiveness can be accessed through remember, recognition, and relearning.
The forgetting bend illustrates that without exerting any endeavor to remember information, we forget near of what nosotros larn within 24 hours. Revisiting information soon after its introduction, and occasionally thereafter, can dramatically increment recall.
In lodge to learn effectively, you must be able to prioritize information and focus on the nearly of import concepts.
At that place are many strategies you can use to enhance your power to recall information, including mnemonics, rehearsal, and using visuals. Experiment with these strategies and identify what works best for you.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/austincc-learningframeworks/chapter/chapter-9-memory-and-information-processing/