Allan Paivio's Dual Coding Theory Essay

Allan Paivio was born March 29, 1925, he was an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University in 1959 and taught at the University of Western Ontario from 1963 until his retirement. Paivio was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario as the son of Aku Päiviö and Ida Hänninen. His father was a Finnish Canadian journalist, poet and socialist.

Paivio has published approximately two hundred articles and is most known for his dual-coding theory. Dual-coding theory posits that nonverbal and verbal information are stored separately in long term memory. Allan Paivio earned three degrees from McGill University between 1949 and 1959. Paivio earned a Ph.D. in Psychology, and has spent over
It has had its roots in the practical use of imagery as a memory aid 2500 years ago for example, one can think of a car by thinking of the word “car”, or by forming a mental image of a car. The verbal and image systems are correlated, as one can think of the mental image of the car and then describe it in words, or read or listen to words and then form a mental image. DCT identifies three types of processing: (1) representational, the direct activation of verbal or non-verbal representations, (2) referential, the activation of the verbal system by the nonverbal system or vice versa, and (3) associative processing, the activation of representations within the same verbal or nonverbal system. A given task may require any or all of the three kinds of processing. Verbal system units are called logogens; these units contain information that underlies our use of the word. Non-Verbal system units are called imagens. Imagens contain information that generates mental images such as natural objects, holistic parts of objects, and natural grouping of objects. Imagens operate synchronously or in parallel; thus all parts of an image are