Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Information Processing Blog 1



In Module 11 on Information Processing, many topics were discussed. One topic I found important was what exactly information processing was. Information processing is how we process information and how we forget and remember this information. This theory offers the occurrence of how cognitive processes influence learning. This includes determining HOW students can most effectively process learned information. It also discusses how people pay attention and learn only what they want to pay attention to and learn about.  For example, many students have a variety of different distraction when in class. Sometimes the students choose to pay attention to the distracting events and sometimes they choose the class lecture. Another is that a meaning to a learner is influenced by previous knowledge, events, and beliefs. If a teacher is teaching about a topic and a student has an event that relates to that topic, the student’s topic will influence how he views the teacher’s lesson.

I did not quite understand the topic on the active long term memory model. The idea that includes working memory can include memory processes that are outside of our conscious awareness con fused me. How is this possible?

In the information processing theory learning is defined as a way to mentally process information. The process of learning is satisfied once a student takes in the information, changes its form, stores it, and retrieves it. The retrieval stage is the defining stage in which something was actually learned or not. One teaching implication is the use of mnemonic devices which helps students in the working memory stage. This teaching strategy gives students symbols, keywords, etc. and helps them to remember and store information.

People forget things normally because of three main reasons. One is encoding failure. In encoding failure the memory never fully reached long term memory storage. The second is storage decay. In storage decay the new information a person is trying to retain fades quickly without a chance to store it in the long term memory. The last one is retrieval failure. In retrieval failure, people have the information stored but cannot pull up any record of it.

1 comment:

  1. I don't quite understand the wording of your question--maybe you could ask it again via email or before midterms? It is true that some parts of memory processing are totally unconscious. This model isn't strictly about the brain (it's a theoretical model of the mind as a computer) but there's a lot of processing that happens but isn't brought to our awareness. We lose MOST sensory information that's coming at us at any given moment. We (or I) equated working memory to conscious thought, so in that sense, as we're treating it in class, anything that makes it to conscious thought is a part of working memory--that doesn't mean there aren't other things happening that we're not conscious of.

    This is good but I can't see a place where you distinguish the types of memory and how something get's from one stage to another.... I hope you understand the information, but I wish I could see it here!

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