The Information Processing Theory discusses how students' memories are vital to learning. This theory says that information goes through three stages in the brain: sensory memory, working memory and long-term memory. Sensory memory encompasses all the things in one's environment; such as the color of the walls and doors, the smells of the room, what furniture is in the room, and everything that a person is sensing falls into the sensory memory. But the brain cannot retain all of that information in the forefront of the mind so a lot of that information is lost so the working memory can think of things other than the color of the carpet. The working memory also has a limited capacity, it is said to hold 5 to 9 bits of information at once. This stage of memory takes what is being focused on in the sensory memory and making sense of it. The working memory is also responsible for connecting the things in front of one to his or her long-term memory. The long-term memory(LTM) is what is responsible for holding all that a person has truly learned, but sometimes retrieving that information can be difficult. For bits of information to make it to the LTM they have to be encoded in a meaningful way that is easy to retrieve, otherwise one cannot really remember. The LTM has an unlimited capacity and can store for unlimited amounts of time.
I am not sure that I understand why people forget things other than there just is not enough space in the working memory to keep it there, connect it to something in the long-term memory and then encode it so it stays in LTM.
According to the Information Processing Theory learning occurs when information makes it to the long-term memory. Every student has a different way of studying things so they remember best when test time rolls around. Some students use mnemonics, others chunking, but for bits of information to make it to the long-term memory a connection has to be made. One way of doing this is through multi-sensory teaching. When a teacher connects letter characters to the sounds they make, for example, a student can connect the sight of the character to the sound the letter makes and encode that in a chunk that can be saved for later. This is also why when things are put to tune (i.e. ABC's) students can remember them better, because they are making a stronger, multi-sensory connection between the characters, sounds, and tune.
Information Processing theorists would discourage teachers from having their students just repeat something until it sticks because according to their theory repetition is completely ineffective for learning. This is because the students are not necessarily learning the meaning behind what they are repeating, simply the order in which they repeat it. This makes it incredibly difficult for a student to take that information from the long-term memory(if it makes it there) and connect it to new information and be able to think critically.
In response to your question, there are several other reasons why people forget things. One reason is encoding failure, in which information may have never even reached long-term memory storage. If you a trying to memorize certain dates for a history class and do not use a strategy such as chunking, mnemonics, or something else, it will not be encoded and moved to long-term storage. Storage decay is another reason people forget things. If you learn something new (a phone number, for example), the memory of it can fade very fast and eventually level off. A third reason for forgetting is retrieval failure, when you have learned something but cannot retrieve the mental record of it. The information can be described as being "on the tip of your tongue," because you know you have learned it, but are just unable to pull it out.
ReplyDeleteCareful! Do not say all of these characteristics are part of the "brain". This model is a model of how memories are processed in the mind, but it is just an abstract model that is useful to researchers who study these things before neuroimaging was an option (or after that point, but people who wanted to study in classrooms where every student can't wear an EEG cap). None of these concepts are perfectly aligned to how neuroscience works, because they're not strictly talking about biology. The sensory memory does sound very biological in the way we've been discussing, and the connections made to long term memory MAY in fact be neural connections too, but they are two separate groups of theories.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the only memory component with a capacity limit is working memory. So, you'd need to find ways to get more information in WM, but also use effecient encoding strategies to make connections to what's already in long term memory. "Forgetting", based on how you define it, can happen anytime information is lost, or you fail to retrieve it. You lose information in sensory memory if you don't pay attention to it.... things in WM are lost if they are not encoded.... and even if things are encoded, if you do not "retrieve it" through a cue that connects to the information, you may appear to forget.
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