How Can the Use of Mental Images, Concepts and Schemas to Organise Our Thinking Help Us to Improve Our Memory?
How can the use of mental images, concepts and schemas to organise thinking help us to improve our memory?
Cognitive psychology is primarily concerned with the study of subjective internal mental states. However, the subjective nature of cognitive activities such as thinking, memory, learning, perception, and language make it difficult to directly and empirically test these mental processes. Cognitive psychology therefore relies on a fundamental assumption of reductionism, where the dynamic and convoluted cognitive processes mentioned above are reduced to manageable and pre-agreed hypothetical constructs which can be operationalized, and thus empirically measured to highlight relationships between specific variables. Yes, many developments in Cognitive Psychology have come from the study of brain damaged patients, brain scans, and testing their abilities, or lack of in speaking, remembering, writing, and so forth.
The relationships between several such constructs will be discussed to show how organisation of thinking can enhance memory. Firstly, the constructs deriving from the process of ‘thinking’, namely production of ‘mental images’, ‘concepts’ and ‘schemas’, will be described. Empirical evidence and information cited in Spoors et al.(2011) will be used to demonstrate that constructs relating memory, such as ‘recall’, are enhanced by employing these organised ways of thinking.
The first construct to be discussed is that of production of ‘mental images’. Generally semantic thought is the most typical mode of thinking; this is experienced as inner dialogue or thought in words. However, it has been shown (Raugh and Atkinson, 1975) that recall of verbal or written information is markedly enhanced if learning is accompanied by production of a mental image. Spoors et al. (2011) suggests this ‘key word technique’ is very effective in learning vocabulary from a foreign language. They give an example using the French word ‘poubelle’ meaning bin. Similar sounding
Cognitive psychology is primarily concerned with the study of subjective internal mental states. However, the subjective nature of cognitive activities such as thinking, memory, learning, perception, and language make it difficult to directly and empirically test these mental processes. Cognitive psychology therefore relies on a fundamental assumption of reductionism, where the dynamic and convoluted cognitive processes mentioned above are reduced to manageable and pre-agreed hypothetical constructs which can be operationalized, and thus empirically measured to highlight relationships between specific variables. Yes, many developments in Cognitive Psychology have come from the study of brain damaged patients, brain scans, and testing their abilities, or lack of in speaking, remembering, writing, and so forth.
The relationships between several such constructs will be discussed to show how organisation of thinking can enhance memory. Firstly, the constructs deriving from the process of ‘thinking’, namely production of ‘mental images’, ‘concepts’ and ‘schemas’, will be described. Empirical evidence and information cited in Spoors et al.(2011) will be used to demonstrate that constructs relating memory, such as ‘recall’, are enhanced by employing these organised ways of thinking.
The first construct to be discussed is that of production of ‘mental images’. Generally semantic thought is the most typical mode of thinking; this is experienced as inner dialogue or thought in words. However, it has been shown (Raugh and Atkinson, 1975) that recall of verbal or written information is markedly enhanced if learning is accompanied by production of a mental image. Spoors et al. (2011) suggests this ‘key word technique’ is very effective in learning vocabulary from a foreign language. They give an example using the French word ‘poubelle’ meaning bin. Similar sounding
References: Underline this heading Spoors, P., Dyer, E.W., Finley. and Marsh, G. (2011) Starting with psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University. Very good work.