Enhancing Memory

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Enhancing Memory
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Poor encodingSTM
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Elaborate encodingLTM
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What did you recall?
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Encoding

• The process of converting information into a
  useable form that can be stored and represented
  in memory
• Shallow Processing Informations physical or
  sensory attributes (eg, colour, size, shape and
  texture)
• Moderate Processing Stimulus is encoded
  according to acoustic or phonetic qualities.
  Requires attention and increases the chance of
  retaining in LTM.
• Deep Processing Links new information with
  information already stored in LTM, with
  categories and subcategories. Enhances retrieval
  chances through elaboration and more effective
  retrieval cues.

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Elaboration

• Describes the way in which new information is
  made more meaningful by linking it to prior
  information already stored in LTM.

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Elaboration

• Self-referencing by relating new information to
  personal experiences or your personal situation
  in some way.

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Elaborative Rehearsal

• The process of linking new information in a
  meaningful way with information already stored in
  memory or with other new information to aid its
  storage and retrieval from LTM.

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Elaboration

• Similar concept in some alternative education
  programs (eg, learn a topic from all possible
  angles)

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Context-Dependent Cues

• Environment cues in the specific context
  (setting) where a memory was formed, which act as
  retrieval cues to help access the memories formed
  in that context.
• Eg, sights, sounds, smells, etc.

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Context-Dependent Cues

• Police taking an eye-witness back to the scene of
  the crime to help retrieve information from LTM.

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Context-Dependent Cues
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State-Dependent Cues

• Cues associated with an individuals internal
  physiological and/or psychological state at the
  time the memory was formed, which act as
  retrieval cues to help access those memories.

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State-Dependent Cues

• If information is learned when you are happy,
  sad, intoxicated, sober, calm or aroused, that
  information is more likely to be retrieved when
  you are in the same state.

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Mnemonic Devices

• Retrieval is simplified with the use of a
  mnemonic aid because organisation is enhanced.
• The information memorised is changed into a form
  which it can link in or fit in more easily with
  the information already stored in memory.

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Mnemonic Devices

• Narrative chaining, method of loci, peg word
  method, acrostics, acronyms and rhymes.

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Narrative Chaining

• Linking otherwise unrelated items to one another
  (chaining) to form a meaningful sequence or
  story (narrative).

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Narrative Chaining

• Make up a story to help remember the following
  words
• Dog, ball, house, petrol, supermarket, party,
  chairs, box.

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Narrative Chaining

• The playful dog retrieved a ball that was thrown
  towards a house. The owner of the property
  worked at a petrol station on weekdays and a
  supermarket on weekends. His wife was planning a
  party for their five-year-old son. The games
  planned were musical chairs, and Jack in the box.

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Narrative Chaining
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Method of Loci

• This technique uses a well-learned sequence of
  locations as a series of retrieval cues for the
  information to be recalled.

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Method of Loci

• Visualise entering your house through the gate,
  up the path to the front door, through the foyer,
  etc and each location would act as a cue for what
  needs to be remembered.

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Method of Loci

• The concrete in the front of the gate has sensory
  memory engraved in it, the path has an eyeball
  from an old toy on the ground to represent iconic
  (visual) memory, the door has an ear-shaped door
  knob to represent echoic (auditory) memory, the
  foyer has an embroided sign saying short-term
  memory instead of home sweet home, etc.

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Method of Loci
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Method of Loci
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Rhyming Activity

• Capsicum, clothes-rack, Dalmatian, boat, iPod,
  tree, wheelbarrow, flute, toothpick, 5