Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Informational Processing Blog Post 2
A child is learning how to tie her shoes. First an adult shows her how to do it. This counts as visual input. Unfortunately, the child will not be able to remember exactly how to do it after only watching it once. This is because some of that visual input will be lost. Then the child will be taught again how to tie the shoe and given the opportunity to try it herself. This is an example of giving attention to input. Then the child will practice and practice the skill until she can ties her shoes on her own. This is an example of rehearsal. The skill will be encoded into her long-term memory, and then retrieved every time in life when she needs to tie her shoes.
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I think you have some confusion here. The visual input is definitely part of working memory but so is anything else happening in the room that could potentially enter the senses--whether the child is conscious of it or not (sound coming from another room, the temperature). As long as the child is watching, she's probably attending to the adult, and that information is already getting to working memory. Working memory is conscious thought, so her thinking/watching the scenario is already in working memory. Practicing the skill is not a type of rehearsal. Rehearsal might be if she repeats the information over and over in her mind so that she keeps it in conscious thought. (Saying "make a loop make a loop make a loop" over and over until she's done with that part). In the time it takes to complete the tying, new things will probably have left and entered conscious thought.
ReplyDeleteMOST importantly--this is important--rehearsal alone cannot move something into long term memory (encode it). Repetition alone will keep something in conscious thought but will not connect it to prior knowledge already in long term memory (every method of encoding we discussed has this quality!)