Psy 342 Learning & Memory

Imagery/Mnemonics (Ch. 9) 

Things to think about:

1.  Explain the meaning and importance of the following statement:
   "Massed practice does work, but only for the short-run." 

2.  If you decide to take breaks to distribute your study, what should you do during the retention interval? Why?

3. Give an example in which you (or some other learner) experience(s) the effects of retroactive interference. Now do the same for proactive interference.

4. What is transfer appropriate processing? What does this effect imply about how you should study?

5.  How does dual-coding theory explain why it is easier to remember concrete words compared to abstract words?

I.  General Suggestions that Work to Improve Memory 

       A. Distributed Practice      

       Lorge (1930)—Performance on a mirror drawing task 

1-day,  1-minute, or no interval between trials 

Performance after 20 trials with massed practice was the same as performance after only 5-6 trials with distributed practice. 

Massed practice does work, but only for the short run. 

       B. Decrease Interference 

       Sleep between study sessions to minimize likelihood of encountering potentially interfering matter. 

Mental inactivity aids consolidation 

Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)— 2 students learned lists of 10 nonsense syllables 

Recall after 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours (either awake or asleep during interval).

Results: Better recall following sleep than following wakefulness. 

According to consolidation theory, sleeping allows perseveration process to operate without interruption.

During the intervals created by using distributed processing, you should avoid performing tasks that can interfere. 

       Proactive vs. retroactive interference

       C. Deep Processing 

       Remember levels of processing theory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972)? 

       When studying factual information, ask yourself “why?” 

       Studies have suggested that this is a particularly effective form of elaborative processing. 

       Transfer appropriate processing—when studying also must consider the type of processing that will be required during test.

 II. Imagery

The mental representation of stimuli that are not physically present.

bizarre images vs. interacting images

Paivio’s (1971, 1968) dual-coding hypothesis--words representing concrete objects can be encoded in two different ways, whereas words representing abstract objects can be encoded in only one way.

III. Mnemonics

       A. Method of Loci

       B. Peg-word Method

One is a bun, two is a shoe....