Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Information Processing Post 1


This chapter discussed Information Processing.  Not only did it discuss how information is learned and stored, but it also discussed the ideas that personal interests and life experiences can influence what information is stored.  Also introduced and discussed in this chapter was the Three-Stage Model of Information Processing.  In this theory, there are three different types of memory—Sensory, Working, and Long-term.  Each type has different strategies and theories that are associated with it to help learn the information at hand.

This chapter also focused on information processing from a teacher’s standpoint.  Since children develop at different times and have different interests and life experiences to help aid, or hurt, this process, teachers have a difficult job of making sure that their students are learning the information that they need to be learning.  This chapter provided different ideas to help teachers through this process.  Some of these include using visual aids to help their students memorize ideas and repeating ideas and having students paraphrase these ideas to help them remember. 

After reading this chapter, I still wonder how information processing works for students with intellectual disabilities.  Not only do they already have a hard time learning some of the concepts, but remembering them is a whole other feat in and of itself.  Especially for students in inclusion classrooms, how is this handled?  Are their special strategies that are used more commonly when a teacher is in an inclusion classroom?

In Information Processing, learning is the processing, storing, and retrieval of information.  If a person can do all three of those steps, then the information is actually learned.  To specify, to learn something, information must first be learned in the sensory memory.  Next, after being repeated, it moves to the working memory.  Last, it is stored in the long-time memory.  After being retrieved from there, it is learned.  The reason that it cannot be viewed as being learned before this is because it could simply be short-term memory, where it shortly is forgotten after not being used.

The reason that you can hear your name in a crowded room even when you were previously in a conversation is because of your sensory memory.  One of the criteria to determine the amount of attention certain stimuli obtain is personal significance.  Since your name is something that has a great deal of personal significance, it will catch your attention when said.  Even if you are talking, hearing that one word can catch your attention.

2 comments:

  1. In response to your question you probably already know this, but each individual is different so I think it's difficult to answer your question. I would think that the teacher would know the specific struggles each student deals with and would be able to adjust their teaching style so that the student can learn. I can't respond specifically to your question, but I would really like to know the answers to your questions.

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  2. It's true that individuals with cognitive difficulties may have somewhat different ways of perceiving and learning, these theories are basically true of anyone. Any person will have what this theory calls 'sensory memory', etc, and repetition will keep information in their working memory, and encoding strategies will move things to their long term memory. That's it. Of course, HOW things are connected to long term memory might be the difference. You may have to explain it in one way with one student vs another.

    I might not use the world 'learned' for sensory and working memory. I'd say something's learned once it gets to long term. Also, repetition doesn't MOVE something to working memory. Attention does this. Repetition can keep something in conscious thought (WM).

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