Professional Documents
Culture Documents
M.Phil Education
University of Balochistan, Quetta
Sensory Memory
The existence of perceptual store in the information-processing system that
registers information and holds it very briefly was demonstrated in some experiments
conducted by Sperling. He flashed a visual array of 12 letters on a screen for less than a
second, and then asked subjects what letters they saw. They reported 3 or 4 letters
accurately. Although this result seemed to indicate a limited processing, Sperling showed
that, all of the letters enter sensory memory. Sensory memory is temporally limited not
visually. He used a partial report technique: high, medium, or low tone to indicate subjects
which row of the array report.
Little is known about the sensory memories corresponding the other senses, but
they are presumed to function in a similar way. Turvey and Crowder found, that the
auditory sensory memory (echo) lasted longer than the visual sensory memory (icon), to 4
seconds under partial report conditions. In others words, sounds remain in sensory
memory long enough to combine with other sounds so that speech may be understood.
Sperling’s partial report technique illustrates the effect of Attention has on
information processing. Attention has been conceptualized in many ways. Instructors
expect students pay attention in class, but non-attentive students miss info. Treisman
showed that attention serves to attenuate, or tune out stimulation. Think about a party. You
are attending to one conversation, unaware of what else is around you. When you hear
your name, your attention shifts. Learners have some control over the process and
selectively focus attention. Some tasks require less attention, and are accomplished
automatically. These aspects of attention have implications for instruction.
Selective Attention
It is learner’s ability to select and process information while simultaneously ignoring
other information. Individuals pay attention across two or more tasks (or sources of
information) or focus on selected information within a single task. It depends on some
factors: the meaning that information holds for an individual, your name spoken is highly
meaningful to you. The similarity between tasks or sources of information makes a
difference, imagine the a student, for example, who is trying to listen to the teacher at the
same time a classmate talks in her ear. Similarly, a learner enjoys studying to classical
music but find her concentration slipping when vocal music is played. Task complexity also
influences attention. A task may also demand more attention when learner has little prior
knowledge of it. Finally, the ability to control attention appears to differ with age,
hyperactivity, intelligence, and learner disabilities (Grabe). For example, attention deficit
disorder condition afflicts a small proportion of preadolescent children.
Saleh Muhammad
M.Phil Education
University of Balochistan, Quetta
Good and Brophy recommended instructors use signals (let’s begin, Back on task!)
It is important to focus student attention on certain aspects of the instructional materials;
stimulus features can be highlighted through use of color or type of print (in textual
materials), voice inflections or gestures (in classroom presentations), and novelty. Finally,
Grabe (1986) reviewed ways in which learners themselves are taught to stay on task and
selectively attend to important features on instruction.
Automaticity
When task are over learned or sources of information become habitual, and
attention requirements are minimal, automaticity has occurred. Driving a car is a good
example of the distinction Shiffring Schneider made between automatic and controlled
processing. The driving task is automatic, enabling the driver to listen to a radio program.
LaBerge and Samuels developed a theory for automatic processing in reading:
decoding words are automatic for readers that they can concentrate their attention on
comprehending the meaning of what is read. To develop automatic decoding skills in
readers, there are some possibilities including extended word identification practice as part
of the regular text-reading curriculum (Beck), researchers use the potential of computers
to provide different types of word tasks (Perfetti & Curtis). Readers will generally allocate
greater attention to important elements in a text (Anderson, 1982). They determine
importance based on the purpose for which they are reading as well as features of the text
that signal something is important by typographical cues in the text as boldface print,
capitalization (Glynn and Divesta), also titles, and specific phrases. Idea unit structure
refers to main ideas and supporting details within a paragraph. Ideas structure is more
attended and remembered than buried details. These features are used to write to-be-
learned information in instructional texts. Automatization of other basic skills (such as the
rules of arithmetic operations and grammar) is considered to be a desirable educational
goal (Gagné and Bloom)
examples that differ from the prototype in systematic ways. They help student to
abstract the meaning. To see how this model might work, consider one of the concepts
from the previous chapter: positive reinforcement. A prototypic example is the use of
reinforcement. Then, examples are demonstrated with children in school or adults at work.
Feature comparison and prototype models are unable to account for why some
patterns are recognized without all the features, or they fail to resemble their prototype.
Gestalt psychologists demonstrated that human perception “goes beyond the information
given” in order to construct a meaningful interpretation.
For example, in this picture you
don’t see just a bunch of dots. The
concept of closure prompts us to close
up the spaces between dots and we see
an “A”. In proximity, we see it not as a
nine dots, but as three sets of three
dots, and in similarity, we don’t see
black and white dots, we see a black X.
Pattern recognition is affected by context, past experience, or prior learning.
Solving problems also requires overcoming those effects. The influences of past
experience and context on perception can also come together in expectations about the
students, in other words, expecting a students to be a problem in class can predispose the
instructor to perceiving more problem behaviors. Goldenberg described two cases of
paradoxical expectancy: one, the student achievement is lower than the teacher expected,
and the other, besides teacher’s low expectations, the student succeeds. When the
learners have paid sufficient attention and patter recognition of selected portions of the
stimulus has occurred, a great deal more processing is still required for the information to
become a meaningful and permanent part of memory.
Working memory
At this stage concepts from long-term memory will be activated for use in making
sense of the incoming information, but there are limits to how much information can be
help in working memory, at one time and for how long information may be retained there,
unless, of course something is done increase capacity or duration in some way. George
Miller demonstrated that a test of reading lists of 7 items is easier to remember: the 7
digits of a local phone number, the 7 wonder of the world, the 7 seas, the 7 notes of the
musical scale, and the 7 days of week. Working memory capacity may be increased
through creating larger bits, known as the process chunking. For example this span of
letters: JFKFBIAIDSNASA, as individual letters, they exceed working memory capacity,
but as a 4 chunks: “JFK, FBI, AIDS, NASA” they are easily processed. For instruction,
learning tasks should be organized so that they can be easily chunked by the learned.
Chunks of information are stored in working memory into a series of slots, with each chunk
taking up slot. As new chunks come into memory, they push out those that occupied the
available spaces. The duration of working memory is between 15 to 30 seconds.
Rehearsal
When you repeat the phone number to yourself over and over while waiting to use
the phone, you are engaged in rehearsal. The repetition serves to maintain the information
in the working memory for some designated period of time. As more crowd in, the
rehearsal becomes more difficult. Recency and primacy effects are associated with short-
term memory, but there is something similar on long-term memory.
Saleh Muhammad
M.Phil Education
University of Balochistan, Quetta
Encoding
It is the process of relating incoming information to concepts and ideas already in
memory, since new material is more memorable. Humans will always try to make things
meaningful, (natural inclination) to fit some new experiences into what they already know.
Encoding servers to make permanent what these processes have initiated. The concept of
organization: groping related information into categories to learn and remember it. Even
when it seems unrelated. Outlines, hierarchies and concept trees help learners to organize
material. Mnemonics and mediation (Matlin): learning a list of unrelated words is easier by
linking them in a story. Learners may be encouraged to invent their own mnemonics, like
acronyms. Imagery: pictures, visual displays, or simply instructions to form images
facilitate learning. Self-questioning: learners ask themselves to aid in comprehending
material, or drawing inferences from a text. Snowman pointed out that learners must be
taught how frame good questions. Encoding continues to play an important role in LTM.
proceed across only one pointer; in the second one, two pointers, or memory levels
are searched. Collins and Quillian, who provided experimental support, confirmed
predictions. They also found troubling findings. Subjects recognize faster a canary as a
bird than a penguin.
the concept nodes or propositions do. The units are processing devices, and
connections describe how the units interact with each other. They form a vast network
across processing is distributed. When learning occurs, environmental input (or input from
the network) activates the connections among units, strengthening some connections
while weakening others. These patterns of activations that represent concepts and
principles or knowledge as we think of it. Knowledge is stored in the connections among
processing units.
Those connections carry different weights of association, learning occurs in the
continual adjustment of the weights. Since processing occurs in parallel, may adjustment
take place simultaneously, as continuous error adjustment. PDP models offer advantages
over other models on what they explain about human information processing. They
account the incremental nature of human learning; they provide a more dynamic picture of
it. They offer a way to incorporate goals into the information processing systems. On the
other hand, Estes pointed out the lack of forthcoming evidence to support PDP model as a
mirror of neural processes in the brain. There is little reason to believe a single processor
model is sufficient to model brain functioned. “Evolution of the brain has not yielded a
machine of uniform design like a digital computer but rather a mélange of systems and
subsystems of different evolutionary ages”.
Recognition
It involves a set of pregenerated stimuli presented to learner for a decision.
Learners are asked to determine whether the stimulus has been seen before, as in old-
new recognition tasks. It has become popular for assessing reading comprehension. For
example, students read a passage, and then complete a verification test. There are test
sentences of 4 types: 1. an original sentence from the paragraph, 2. a paraphrase of the
original sentence, 3. a meaning-change sentence with 1 or 2 words replaced, 4. a
distractor sentence. Students who comprehended the passage are able to recognize the
original and paraphrase sentences and classify the meaning-change and distractor
sentences.
Two factors that influence old-new recognition are: The strength of memory trace.
Stronger memories are more accurately recognized than weaker memories. Imagine you
are choosing drapes to match the color of your living room carpet. There are 2 possible
scenarios: 1) the drapes are inexpensive and you can return them. 2) They are expensive,
you must pay for in advance and they can't be returned. In which scenario are you more
likely to make a yes decision? The second factor is high-risk conditions. There is also
forced-choice recognition, and memory plays a role in the decision. The distractors in each
test item and a penalty for wrong answers will decrease guessing. In a four-distractor item,
the chance of getting an item right by guessing is 25%, but if you could eliminate 2
distractors immediately, this increases to 50%. For test construction is implicated to write
distractors with equal probability of being chosen if the learner is forced to guess.
Encoding Specificity
Retrieval is influenced by cues available to learners. 2 investigated principles of the
relation between conditions at encoding and conditions at recall. Cues used by learners to
facilitate encoding also serve as the best retrieval cues. (Thomson & Tulving)
Retrieval is influenced by the context of encoding. Context or examples are
important to discuss in the presentation of new concepts. Available cues to assist in
encoding may later used for recall. If new information is presented in only one context,
there are not enough cues to support retrieval.
State-dependent learning. Information learned in a particular state of mind (free
from alcohol or drugs influence) is remember best in the same state of mind. (Goodwin)
Bower demonstrated a similar phenomenon with moods. Words learned under a happy
mood were better recalled under a happy mood. Emotions are coded in memory.
Saleh Muhammad
M.Phil Education
University of Balochistan, Quetta
Forgetting
Failure to encode
The information sought during retrieval was never learned in the first place. Illusion
of knowing: Poor readers don't monitor their reading so believe they read and understand
when they don't so. Ineffective study strategies: a student had achieved a low score on a
test. "But I studied for hours!" she wailed. She studied by rereading her notes and the
book. Repetition can only go so far. It is important to have and activate relevant
prior knowledge.
Failure to retrieve
It is the inability to access previously learned information. It is like losing the
directory to your computer's hard drive. The files are still there, but they can't be accessed
and retrieved. A common strategy for enhancing retrieval is note-taking (Gagné & Discroll)
It is an external retrieval strategy.
Interference
Other information gets in the way of effective retrieval. It can occur from
Information learned before or after the new one. Information learned later is more recent
and that yields memory traces than information learned earlier. Also previous learning
interferes with later one. It is proactive interference. A long-time tennis player tries to learn
racquetball, but he swings the entire arm rather than with just the wrist. The well-learned
skill of swinging a tennis racket interferes with the recently learned response of swinging a
racquetball racket.
Rice & Mayer investigated memory deficits among older adults. Older adults
remember less from a text than do younger adults. But they found no evidence to support
a memory deficit. Older adults tend to get caught in the details and lose sight of the main
ideas, proactive interference occurred. Visual displays provide useful encoding and
retrieval cues. Problems in the learning and remembering of adults seem to be a declining
speed rather than declining mental powering. Adults work at their own pace, like children;
they can learn more effective learning strategies for encoding and retrieval. Memory failure
can also be caused by other conditions, such as amnesia or Alzheimer's disease but these
have little relevance to instruction and are beyond this chapter.