A student may learn “The Continental
Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776” during
a history lesson. This statement registers in the student’s sensory memory in
multiple ways. The auditory input of the teacher’s voice stating the fact, the
visual input of a picture of a firework on the PowerPoint slide, and the
emotional connection the student feels to her memories of watching fireworks on
July 4th. Within seconds, this information will be gone from her sensory
memory.
However, the students emotional
feelings she gets from her memory of the fourth of July celebration calls
attention to this new information. The new information has been flagged as
important and more attention will be given to it. In the working memory, the
student connects the new information to her prior knowledge and experience through
elaborative rehearsal.
As she begins recognizes the meaning
behind the celebration with fireworks as connected to the adopting of the
Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776, she begins to encode
the information to be filed away into her long-term memory.
Twenty seconds later, the class has
moved on and the information is stored away, she cannot recall the information
without a retrieval cue. When given a retrieval cue, the student can recall
this information from her long-term memory back to her working memory where it
can be once again used, filed away, or added to.
While this is a good example of a fact that students learned, how can a teacher help the students to make sure that this fact is stored away in memory? In your example, the student did all of the emotional connections in his or her own head, but what about the other students? One way that the teacher could ensure that all of the students have this same emotional connection is by asking them what they do on the Fourth of July and helping to make this connection for them.
ReplyDeleteThis is good. Be careful--emotion isn't a part of sensory memory--I'd say that goes more toward long term (because the past connections are stored in LTM). Any senses that are activated and can process information (taste, tough, sight, etc) make up sensory memory.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting distinction.... that emotional significance calls attention to something in sensory memory (and brings it to conscious thought). This is pretty technical, but I think the piece of emotion in LTM is activated as that collection of sensory memory is coming in, directing attention to a particular piece.... Interesting!
This is really nice. You don't discuss working memory much here. Encoding does happen while it's in working memory, but something can just sit in WM without being moved (if it's rehearsed over and over and stays in conscious thought). You might want to be able to describe the conscious experience of thinking about these things as working memory.