Knowledge Acquisition and Memory Development
Week 2 – Assignment
Knowledge Acquisition and Memory Development
Prior to beginning work on this assignment, please read all the required readings and the Instructor Guidance, as well as view all required multimedia. It is suggested that you also review the recommended resources for this week as a number of them may assist you in creating this written assignment with links to applicable articles.
Too often, when we learn about memory development, we forget that this has a direct relationship to effectively learning. Knowledge is essentially a memory and how well we process information affects our performance at many levels. For this paper, you will be explaining some of the cognitive-based ideologies that explain how memory development works, how it is affected by outside variables, and strategies for improving one’s own information processing effectively. You will demonstrate an understanding of psychological research methods and skeptical inquiry by correctly utilizing support resources within your writing.
Discuss the following in your paper:
- What is memory development and how does it relate to acquiring new knowledge?
- Why is it important to successfully move information from working (short-term) memory to long-term memory (effective information processing)?
- What strategies can be utilized to move knowledge from working memory to long-term memory more effectively? (List a minimum of three strategies.)
- How much does attention and perception play a role in successful development of schema?
- How do the types of memories (knowledge) affect how we effectively process information?
- Consider the following:
- Semantic memories
- Episodic memories
- Autobiographical memories
- Consider the following:
- How does false memory development affect how we learn effectively? Is anyone immune?
The Knowledge Acquisition and Memory Development paper
- Must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
- Must include a separate title page with the following:
- Title of paper
- Student’s name
- Course name and number
- Instructor’s name
- Date submitted
- Must use headings and sub-headings. See example. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
- Must use appropriate research methods (e.g. use of the Ashford library) to support the content inclusions.
- Must begin with an introductory paragraph that has a succinct thesis statement. [Explain the topic of this paper and succinctly summarize the elements you will discuss.]
- Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought. For assistance with the critical thinking portion of the written assignment, please see the information included on the Critical Thinking Community website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
- Must end with a conclusion that summarizes your topic and findings.
- Must use at least one scholarly source from the Ashford University Library, in addition to the required e-book.
- Must not use quoted material.
- Please synthesize the information you have read. For tips on how to do this please click here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..
- Must document all sources in APA style, as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
- Must include a separate reference page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. If you are unsure how to create an APA style reference page, please visit the Citation and Reference page on the Ashford Writing Center website.
- Submit this paper to the Grammarly tool within the course prior to submission. See resources tab on the left.3
Memory and Learning
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
· Explain how working memory and long-term memory work together to create memories.
· Explain Baddeley’s model of working memory.
· Describe the roles of attention and perception in memory formation.
· Analyze how human cognitive architecture affects learning.
· Identify strategies for learning as suggested by cognitive load theory.
· Evaluate how schema construction is affected by automation.
· Explain autobiographical memory and how it affects knowledge acquisition.
· Describe how false memory development affects effective learning.
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Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever
· wondered why you remember some things accurately, but not others?
· noticed that your memories about an event differ greatly from someone else’s memories?
· wanted to improve your memory?
· felt overwhelmed by the amount of information you need to remember?
· considered that what you remember about persons, places, and things has a direct relationship to who you believe you are as a person?
· experienced a disagreement with a friend who says you participated in an event together, but you do not remember the event?
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Technological advancements make it possible for researchers to continue to learn about the science of cognition.
These types of questions make the study of memory development and its role in learning a popular topic. Curiosity and technological advancement have furthered research in many areas of brain science and cognition, such as neuropsychology (the relationship between brain and cognition, emotion, and behaviors), neurobiology (the relationship between the nervous system and behaviors and information processing), and psychometrics (the measurement of attitudes, traits, achievement, attitudes, skills, and knowledge). In addition, psychologists who study human thought processes and the capacity for successful knowledge acquisition have multidimensional emphases often based on their personal interests. For example, some psychologists choose to focus on memory development associated with learning disabilities, the effects of emotion on false memory development, injury recovery, or motivational triggers activating increased attention and perception. The list of areas for study is endless, especially as researchers continue to better understand how the human brain functions.
A more holistic understanding of how memory processes work is an important step toward understanding the bigger picture of how humans learn. In Chapter 2, you were introduced to cognition and components that align with this theoretical model: information processing, schema development, cognitive mapping, and Bloom’s taxonomy. This chapter will explore how these concepts fit into the bigger picture of memory development. As you read, consider how your own memory development has helped or even hindered you throughout your life. Consider how memory development has affected your loved ones, whether they are young or entering later stages of life. Connecting the chapter content to your personal experiences will help you make solid connections through successful schema development. (To learn more about one researcher’s studies of working memory and the effects of its limitations, see Reinforcing Your Understanding: Making Sense of the World Around Us.)
Reinforcing Your Understanding: Making Sense of the World Around Us
Peter Doolittle is an educational psychologist and the executive director of the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research at Virginia Tech. In his TEDTalk “How your ‘working memory’ makes sense of the world,” he discusses the four basic components of working memory and how its limitations can affect our ability to process the world around us. Specifically, limitations of working memory contribute to how well we make sense of what is going on in each moment. Doolittle describes some strategies that can be used to make the most out of the information that’s in our environments. Consider how understanding and applying such strategies can potentially improve your own memory development.
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3.1 Working Memory
What exactly is working memory? Working memory is a cognitive system that temporarily stores and manages a limited amount of information. Working memory is often referred to as short-term memory, although short-term memory is considered only one component of the larger mechanism of holding and manipulating information included in working memory. Baddeley noted that working memory is “a brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive tasks as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning” (2003, p. 189).
Working memory is essential because it regulates our attentiveness to tasks and how we manage distractions, apply strategies to our learning experiences, and form long-term memories. Long-term memory (LTM) is the virtually limitless cognitive system that permanently stores, manages, and retrieves information for later use.
According to Baddeley’s model of working memory , the maintenance of information occurs in one of three subcomponents within this system: the visuo-spatial scratchpad , which holds and manages spatial information; the phonological loop , which holds and manages auditory information; and the episodic buffer , which creates representations of the information, aligning new knowledge to previous knowledge, as shown in Figure 3.1 (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). These systems are suggested to be controlled by the central executive system.
Figure 3.1: Baddeley’s model of working memory
Baddeley and Hitch proposed a three-part model of working memory. The central executive system controls the three subcomponents by filtering all available information.
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The central executive system regulates the flow of information, filtering out what is unnecessary, to improve information processing (e.g., decision making, reasoning, and knowledge acquisition). The subcomponents are used as the temporary storage place of the information.
It is also important to note as you read about memory development that research in this area is advancing and elaborating. For example, in 1956, during the noted cognitive revolution, George Miller introduced the idea that working memory was limited (Miller, 2012). Through several experiments, he and his colleagues suggested that the “channel capacity” for attending to information was seven (plus or minus two) pieces of information. This suggestion has been foundational over the years in many learning strategies, such as chunking.
However, as research and technology have continued to advance, additional researchers have suggested that this capacity is limited to approximately 2 seconds, noting that when words or chunked information was introduced with gaps of time, the ability to address the elements was limited to a 2-second timeframe, rather than to a certain number of items (Baddeley, 1990). For example, if someone is given a list of numbers, he or she will remember only a 2-second portion of the total sequence.
Further research has indicated the amount of information that we can store might vary from person to person and changes during one’s lifetime, suggesting that information storage could be dependent on the task (Cowan, 2010). Other research has aligned memory recall to the ability to rehearse the information (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). These findings continue to encourage efforts to better understand how the brain works, how to design training and instruction, and how we can learn more effectively.
The excerpts in this section are from Gathercole and Alloway (2007). These excerpts elaborate on what working memory is, how we use it, its importance in the process of accurate memory development, its limitations, and the effects of deficits in our working memory. Understanding how working memory affects learning enables us to use strategic applications and attention to approach learning more coherently.
Excerpts from Understanding Working Memory: A Classroom Guide
By S. E. Gathercole and T. P. Alloway
What Is Working Memory?
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Remembering a new piece of knowledge can often be a difficult task. Working memory helps store and compute information.
Psychologists use the term working memory to describe the ability we have to hold in mind and mentally manipulate information over short periods of time. Working memory is often thought of as a mental workspace that we can use to store important information in the course of our mental activities. A good example of an activity that uses working memory is mental arithmetic. Imagine, for example, attempting to multiply 43 and 27 together, and having it spoken to you by another person, without being able to use a pen and paper or a calculator.
First of all, you would need to hold the two numbers in working memory. The next step would be to use learned multiplication rules to calculate the products of successive pairs of numbers, adding to working memory the new products as you proceed. Finally, you would need to add together the products held in working memory, resulting in the correct solution. Without working memory, we would not be able to carry out this kind of complex mental activity in which we have to keep in mind some information while processing other material.
When We Use Working Memory
Mental arithmetic is just one example of an activity that relies on working memory. Other examples from everyday life include:
· remembering a new telephone number, a PIN number, a web address, or a vehicle registration number while we are trying to find a pen and paper to write it down or to use it in some other way
· following spoken directions such as “Go straight over at the roundabout, take the second left, and the building is on the right opposite the church”
· calculating how much the bill will be at the supermarket checkout for the items we have in our basket
· remembering the unfamiliar foreign name of a person who has just been introduced to you for long enough to enable you to introduce him or her to someone else
· measuring and combining the correct amounts of ingredients (e.g., rub in 50 g of margarine and 100 g of flour, and then add 75 g of sugar) when you have just read the recipe but are no longer looking at the page
You may notice from these examples that we typically use working memory as a sort of mental jotting pad in situations when there is no other external record such as written notes or a calculator.
Limits to Working Memory
[. . .] It is unfortunately true that working memory is limited in a number of ways and can easily fail us when we need it. In particular, we need to continue to pay attention to what is being held in working memory if it is to persist over even short periods of time. Here are some of the situations that often lead to the loss of information from working memory.
· Distraction. An unrelated thought springing to mind, or an interruption such as a telephone ringing or someone speaking to us, can be sufficient to divert attention from the contents of working memory so that its contents are rapidly lost.
· Trying to hold in mind too much information. There is a limit to how much information can be held in working memory. For example, most of us would not be successful in attempting to multiply the numbers 739 and 891 in our heads, simply because the amount of information that has to be stored in the course of this calculation exceeds the capacity of most people’s working memory.
· Engaging in a demanding task. Activities that require difficult mental processing, such as applying the rules of multiplication during mental arithmetic, reduce the amount of space in working memory to store information. This can result in a loss of other information that is already held.
Once information has been lost from working memory, it is gone for good. The only possible way forward is to start again the process of entering information into working memory. In mental arithmetic, for example, the sum would have to be recalculated from the beginning.
Working Memory Capacity Variations
[. . .] There is a personal limit to working memory, with each individual having a relatively fixed capacity that may be greater or less than that of others. So, a particular activity may be well within the capacity of one person but exceed that of another.
Working memory capacity also increases with age during childhood. Young children typically have very small capacities that increase gradually until the teenage years, when adult capacities are reached that are more than double that of 4-year-old children. The growth curve of individuals with average and low working memory capacities for their age is shown in Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2: Changes in working memory capacity with age
The changes in working memory capacity with age for an average child are shown by the solid line. Scores of a child with a low working memory capacity are represented by the broken line.
Adapted from Understanding Working Memory: A Classroom Guide (p. 8), by S. E. Gathercole and T. P. Alloway, 2007, London, England: Harcourt Assessment, Procter House. Copyright 2007 by S. E. Gathercole and T. P. Alloway. Adapted with permission.
Differences in working memory capacity between different children of the same age can be very large indeed. For example, in a typical class of 30 children aged 7 to 8 years, we would expect at least three of them to have the working memory capacities of the average 4-year-old child and three others to have the capacities of the average 11-year-old child, which is quite close to adult levels.
The growth lines on the figure also show that, typically, individuals who have poor working memory capacities in childhood do not catch up with their peers. Although their working memory capacities increase with age, they do not do so at the same rate as other individuals so that, as they grow older, they lag behind more and more. [. . .]
Possible Causes of Low Working Memory
Why some learners have poor working memory capacity is not yet well understood. It is, however, known that low working memory is not strongly related to factors relating to the learner’s background, such as inadequacies in education experiences, or with the quality of social or intellectual stimulation in the home. It seems likely that genes play an important role in the frontal areas of the brain that support working memory.
Measuring Working Memory
There are several methods that can be used to measure the working memory capacity of children. These methods are suitable for use with children from about 4 years of age and typically involve the child attempting to both store and manipulate information in mind over brief periods of time.
Individual tests take no longer than 5 minutes to administer. Paper and pencil tests are available in the Working Memory Test Battery for Children, which is standardized for children aged 4 to 15 years. We have also developed a simple PC-based program called the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA) that can be used from 4 to 22 years. The AWMA is designed for easy administration for classroom teachers and other professionals working in the fields of education, medicine, and health. Test scores are calculated automatically by the computer program, and the child’s performance is automatically summarized at the end of testing. Use of this test requires little training, and it was developed primarily for classroom use. [. . .]
To help teachers identify children who are at risk of having working memory problems without administering direct tests of memory, the Working Memory Checklist for Children has recently been developed. This is a rating scale on which teachers judge how frequently a child exhibits problem behaviors associated with poor working memory. A high score on this checklist indicates that a child is likely to have working memory problems that will affect his or her academic progress. [. . .]
Working Memory and Learning Difficulties
Poor working memory capacity is characteristic of learners with many kinds of learning difficulties. These include individuals with language impairments, with difficulties in reading and mathematics (including dyslexia), with some forms of ADHD, and with developmental coordination disorder. Approximately 70% of children with learning difficulties in reading obtain very low scores on tests of working memory that are rare in children with no special educational needs.
Not all learners with special educational needs have working memory problems. Individuals with problems in areas that are not directly related to learning, such as emotional and behavioral disturbances, typically have working memory capacities that are appropriate for their ages.
Why Working Memory Is Crucial for Young Learners
Working memory is important because it provides a mental workspace in which we can hold information while mentally engaged in other relevant activities. The capacity to do this is crucial to many learning activities in the classroom. Children often have to hold information in mind while engaged in an effortful activity. The information to be remembered may, for example, be the sentence that they intend to write while trying to spell the individual words. It could also be the list of instructions given by the teacher while carrying out individual steps in the task.
Children with small working memory capacities will struggle in these activities, simply because they are unable to hold in mind sufficient information to allow them to complete the task. In these situations, their working memory is overloaded. Losing crucial information from working memory will cause them to forget many things: instructions they are attempting to follow, the details of what they are doing, where they have got to in a complicated task, and so on.
Because children with poor working memory fail in many different activities on many occasions due to working memory overload, they are likely to struggle to achieve normal rates of learning and so will typically make poor general academic progress.
For such children, we recommend an educational approach in which the teacher monitors the child’s classroom learning activities and modifies them if necessary in order to ensure that he or she is working within his or her working memory capacity rather than being overloaded. This will help the child to complete and succeed in these activities and so will build up knowledge and skills across time in a way that will facilitate learning. More detailed guidance about this approach is provided in the “Supporting Children With Working Memory Problems” section.
Case Study of a Child With Poor Working Memory
Nathan is a 6-year-old boy with an impairment of working memory. His nonverbal IQ is in the normal range. He is a quiet child who is well behaved in the classroom and is relatively popular with his peers. He has been placed in the lowest ability groups in both literacy and numeracy. His teacher feels that he often fails to listen to what she says to him and that he is often “in a world of his own.”
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There are several helpful tips to aid a student’s working memory, one of which is reducing the working memory loads, if necessary. This can help the student tackle tasks one at a time, rather than conquering multiple tasks at once.
In class, Nathan often struggles to keep up with classroom activities. For example, when the teacher wrote on the board “Monday 11th November” and, underneath, “The Market,” which was the title of the piece of work, he lost his place in the laborious attempt to copy the words down letter by letter, writing “moNemarket.” It appeared that he had started to write the date, forgotten what he was doing, and begun writing the title instead. He also frequently fails to complete structured learning activities. In one instance, when his teacher handed Nathan his computer login cards and told him to go and work on the computer numbered 13, he failed to do this because he had forgotten the number. On another occasion, Nathan was encouraged to use a number line when counting the number of ducks shown on two cards but struggled to coordinate the act of jumping along the line with counting up to the second number. He abandoned the attempt, solving the sum instead by counting up the total number of ducks on the two cards.
Nathan also has difficulty with activities that combine storage of multiple items with other demanding mental processing. For example, when asked to identify two rhyming words in a four-line text read aloud by the teacher, Nathan was unable to match the sound structures of the pair of words, store them, and then recall them when the teacher finished reading the text.
Supporting Children With Working Memory Problems
As yet, no certain ways of directly improving working memory in children such as Nathan have been developed. However, there is plenty that can be done to enhance learning in children with working memory problems. The approach that we recommend involves teachers managing children’s working memory loads in the classroom, with the aim of alleviating the disruptive consequences on learning of excessive working memory loads.
The following recommendations should be used to support children with working memory impairments and monitor children’s performance in class. In each case, the aim is to minimize the chances that the child will fail to complete the intended learning activity successfully due to working memory failures.
Tip 1: Recognize Working Memory Failures
Working memory failures typically manifest themselves in frequent errors of the following kinds:
· incomplete recall, such as forgetting some or all of the words in a sentence, or of a sequence of words
· failing to follow instructions, including remembering only the part of a sequence of instructions, or forgetting the content of an instruction (for example, the child correctly remembers to go to Mrs. Smith’s classroom as instructed by the teacher but once there cannot remember the content of the message to be given)
· place-keeping errors—for example, repeating and/or skipping letters and words during sentence writing, missing out on large chunks of a task
· task abandonment—the child gives up a task completely
If these types of activity failure are observed, it is recommended that the working memory demands of the task are considered (see tip 2), and if they are believed to be excessive, the activity should be repeated with reduced working memory loads (see tip 3).
Tip 2: Monitor the Child
It is important to monitor the child’s working memory regularly in the course of demanding activities. This will include:
· looking for warning signs of memory overload (see tip 1)
· asking the child directly—for example, ask for details of what the child is doing and intends to do next
In cases when the child has forgotten crucial information:
· repeat information as required
· break down tasks and instructions into smaller components to minimize memory load
· encourage the child to request information when required
Tip 3: Evaluate the Working Demands of Learning Activities
Activities that impose heavy storage demands typically involve the retention of significant amounts of verbal material with a relatively arbitrary content. Some examples of activities with working memory demands that are likely to exceed the capacities of a child with working memory deficits include:
· remembering sequences of three or more numbers or unrelated words (e.g., 5, 9, 2, 6 or cat, lion, kangaroo)
· remembering and successfully following lengthy instructions (e.g., Put your sheets on the green table, put the arrow cards in the packet, put your pencil away, and come and sit on the carpet)
· remembering lengthy sentences containing some arbitrary content to be written down (e.g., To blow up parliament, Guy Fawkes had 36 barrels of gunpowder)
· keeping track of the place reached in the course of multilevel tasks (e.g., writing a sentence down either from memory or from the white board)
Tip 4: Reduce Working Memory Loads If Necessary
In order to avoid working-memory-related failures (see tip 1), working memory loads in structured activities should be decreased. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including:
· reducing the overall amount of material to be stored (e.g., shortening sentences to be written or number of items to be remembered)
· increasing the meaningfulness and degree of familiarity of the material to be remembered
· simplifying the linguistic structures of verbal material (e.g., using simple active constructions rather than passive forms with embedded clauses in activities involving remembering sentences, and in instructions)
· reducing processing demands (see tip 5)
· restructuring multistep tasks into separate independent steps, supported by memory aids if possible
· making available and encouraging the use of external devices that act as memory aids for the child; these include “useful spellings” on white boards and cards, and providing number lines, printed notes, and dictaphones to store information that needs to be remembered
Tip 5: Be Aware That Processing Demands Increase Working Memory Loads
Although children may be capable of storing a particular amount of information in one situation, a demanding concurrent processing task will increase working memory demands and so may lead to memory failure. [. . .] In such cases, steps should be taken to modify the learning activity in order to reduce working memory loads (see tip 3).
Tip 6: Frequently Repeat Important Information
It is good practice when working with children with working memory deficits to regularly repeat information that is crucial to ongoing activities. This will include:
· general classroom management instructions
· task-specific instructions (what the whole activity consists of, broken down into simple steps)
· detailed content intrinsic to an activity (e.g., the particular sentence to be written)
Children should also be encouraged to request repetition of important information in cases of forgetting.
Tip 7: Encourage the Use of Memory Aids
A variety of tools that support memory are in common use in classrooms—these include number lines, Unifix blocks and other counting devices, cards, dictaphones, personalized dictionaries with useful spellings, teacher notes on the class white board, and wall charts. These tools can help in several different ways to reduce working memory loads—they may reduce the processing demands of the activity (e.g., useful spellings and Unifix blocks), and they may also reduce the storage load of the task and so help the child keep his or her place (e.g., number lines). [. . .]
Tip 8: Develop the Learner’s Use of Memory-Relieving Strategies
Children with working memory deficits are typically aware of when they have forgotten crucial information but often do not know what to do in such situations. An important role for the teacher is to encourage the child to develop strategies for overcoming memory problems. These will include:
· use of rehearsal to maintain important information
· use of memory aids (see tip 7)
· organizational strategies—breaking tasks down into component parts where possible
· asking for help when important information has been forgotten [. . .]
Source: Gathercole, S. E., & Alloway, T. P. (2007). Understanding working memory: A classroom guide. London, England: Harcourt Assessment, Procter House. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Working memory is a fascinating component of how we make sense of and organize the world around us and how we process and assign meaning to the information we receive through our senses. By better understanding working memory, we are able to find ways to improve it and use it more effectively, as well as assist others in training or mentoring contexts. Consider what you have already learned from this text about learning. Can you think of personal situations that may have reduced your own working memory, even if only temporarily? Can you think of times you were able to improve your working memory through some strategy? (See Applying Skeptical Inquiry: Dual N-Back Training to learn more about the debates about brain training.) As you will read in this chapter, there are many variables that affect memory development.
Applying Skeptical Inquiry: Dual N-Back Training
Dual N-Back is a game that uses audio and visual signals to strengthen your brain’s ability to recognize and recall signals. In this video, Mark Ashton Smith, a psychologist who focuses on neuroscience and cognitive psychology, demonstrates Dual N-Back training. He suggests that the adaptive activities (increasing in difficulty) exercise a number of executive processes, including attentional selection, updating, and multitasking.
Visit IQ Mindware’s website ( http://www.iqmindware.com/ ) to learn more about how this brain training works and how you can start your own training program. You can also visit Brain Scale’s website ( http://brainscale.net ) to access and learn more about other Dual N-Back trainings. (But be sure to review the Privacy Policy before you begin a training program.)
But you should be aware that brain training is a controversial topic among psychologists and scientists. Some researchers are skeptical of such brain training. But there is also some research that has suggested that it can improve working memory (Chein & Morrison, 2011).
Consider the following articles:
Hambrick, D. Z. (2014, December 2). Brain training doesn’t make you smarter. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com /article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/
Kaufman, S. B. (2013, October 9). New cognitive training study takes on the critics. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican .com/beautiful-minds/new-cognitive-training-study-takes-on-the-critics/
Olena, A. (2014, April 21). Does brain train work? The Scientist. Retrieved from http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39768/title /Does-Brain-Training-Work-/
Questions
1. What would the advantages and disadvantages of this training be?
2. Do you think that brain training really works?
3. Do you think that this type of strengthening can apply to other situations, beyond the context of such exercises?
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3.2 Attention and Perception
3.2 Attention and Perception
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One aspect of attention is the ability to filter out less-important information when working on a particular task. In this photo, a father is attempting to work while taking care of his child. His full attention is on neither task.
When it comes to memory and learning, attention and perception are key variables that can work both in our favor and against us. Attention is the cognitive process of noticing and evaluating the information in one’s environment and filtering out the information that is less important. The amount of attention individuals devote to their surroundings affects how they encode information. Recall from section 3.1, for example, how Gathercole and Alloway (2007) described distraction—the diversion of attention—as a limit to working memory. Simply put, it is harder to remember something if you were not paying attention to it. Because research has suggested that humans can process only a limited amount of information at a time, attention helps them decide what is needed and what is not. When too much information comes too quickly and it’s not possible to attend to every detail, we choose what to attend to.
How an individual discerns, understands, and interprets the information is referred to as perception . Our mental representation of the situation affects how we encode and align new knowledge and experiences to previous ones. For example, consider how you approach your studies during your journey as a student. Your personal interests, as well as past experiences, can affect your attention to the material you are studying. Your perceptions about how relevant or difficult the subject is or your self-efficacy (your ability to succeed) can affect how you encode the information discussed throughout your journey. Even your views about how qualified you think your instructor is to teach the material can affect how the information is encoded.
The series of excerpts in this section is from Brosch, Scherer, Grandjean, and Sander (2013). As you read, pay close attention to how emotions can affect how information is processed. Consider how emotional events could trigger behaviors that may not align with how others might react to the same event.
Excerpts from “The Impact of Emotion on Perception, Attention, Memory, and Decision-Making”
By T. Brosch, K. R. Scherer, D. Grandjean, and D. Sander
The Mind Game
The functioning of the human mind has often been characterized as a battle between opposing forces: reason, rational and deliberate, versus emotion, impulsive and irrational. This way of thinking can be traced back to Plato, who described the human soul as divided into cognition (what we know), emotion (what we feel), and motivation (what we want) and has been further developed by philosophers such as René Descartes (“Les passions de l’âme”) and David Hume (“A Treatise of Human Nature”). For a long time, the notion of the opposition of cognition and emotion has been guiding much research in psychology. Cognitive functions—such as perception, attention, memory, or decision making—have been investigated without taking into account emotion, which was considered as interference that is counterproductive for the correct functioning of the cognitive system. [. . .]
The Impact of Emotion on Perception and Attention
In our everyday environment, we are constantly confronted with large amounts of incoming sensory information. As the capacity of our brain is limited, we cannot process all information entering our senses thoroughly, but have to select a subset to prioritize its processing at the cost of other information. The competition for neural processing resources, in-depth analysis, and preferential access to conscious awareness is organized by dedicated attention systems (Driver, 2001).
Distinct functional subprocesses of attention have been put forward, and their respective properties have been isolated using both behavioral and brain-imaging methods. Low-level properties such as the physical intensity of a stimulus may trigger an automatic, reflexive orienting, referred to as exogenous attention. In contrast, stimuli that are important to the current behavior of the organism (e.g., when searching for one’s keys, or trying to find a friend in a crowd) are selected by a voluntary top-down deployment of endogenous attention, driven by implicit or explicit expectations for a specific object or location. [. . .]
Memory processing can be divided into three stages: encoding (the processing of information at the moment of perception), consolidation (the storage of information in the brain), and retrieval (the moment of remembering). (See Figure 3.3.) [. . .]
Figure 3.3: Memory processing
Encoding, consolidation, and retrieval are the three stages of memory processing.
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