Republic of the Philippines

CAMARINES SUR POLYTECHNIC COLLEGES

Nabua, Camarines Sur

Psychology of Language
Topic: Psychological Mechanisms (The Information-Processing System)

COMPREHENSION TASKS
1. Distinguish episodic and semantic memory.
2. Explain the relevance of information-processing system in language
processing.

ANSWERS:
1. Episodic memory contains memories of personally experienced events and the
context in which they occurred. It makes possible mental time travel through
subjective time from the present to the past, thus allowing one to re-experience
one’s own previous experiences. Semantic memory on the other hand, is an
individual’s store of knowledge about the world. The content of semantic memory
is abstracted from actual experience and is therefore said to be conceptual, that
is, generalized and without reference to any specific experience.
2. Information processing aids in the identification of pertinent cues by
performers through selective attention, hence enhancing movement reactions
that will ultimately result in a good end. If we exercise techniques to improve our
capacity to store more knowledge in the long term memory, our chances of
success are boosted.

REFLECTION:
1. What were your misconceptions about the topic prior to taking up this lesson?
2. What new or additional learning have you gained from this lesson in terms of
skills, content, and attitude.

ANSWERS:

1. Prior to taking up this lesson, I was not really aware of what happens in our
mind in every situation that we encounter. All I know is that what’s inside our
memory is just something that happened in the past that we recall vividly. I was
not really aware of how the information processing system occurs, and how our
minds encodes, retrieves, and stores information.
2. This lesson helped me realize that our mind or our memory plays a vital role
in our everyday, that it performs a big responsibility to store and retrieve
information. I have also understand the different psychological mechanism that
we have and what information processing system is. Having to know this lesson
is very helpful for us to know how our minds work may it be for short term
memory, long term memory, episodic memory, and even for semantic memory.