Psyc-101
Writing Assignment 1
From the reading of chapter 6 “Tips from the Science of Memory—for Studying and for Life”, I learned the science of memory and how to make my memory more effective.
The main idea in this section is about how to memorize scientifically. No matter what model of memory we use, we can sharpen your memory by thinking deeply about the “material” of life and connecting the information to other things we know. Perhaps the one most well connected node or most elaborate schema to which we can relate something is the self—what we know and think about ourselves. To make something meaningful and to secure its place in memory, we must make it matter to ourselves.
There are three mnemonic strategies, Method of loci, Keyword method and Acronyms. It is especially useful to combine the keyword method with other strategies
While the preceding paragraph describes an excellent way to learn the meaning of words, it has limitations. In short, the keyword method helps learners acquire an initial, surface familiarity with a word that can serve as a first step to enable them to recognize the word when they encounter it later. Further active processing can make the word a permanent, automatic part of the learner's repertoire.
To generalize the mnemonic strategies, they referred students back to previous mnemonic instruction; provide explicit prompting and feedback for the keyword and interactive image generation, provided feedback for mnemonic drawings, and provided explicit attribution training. This last consisted of making comments such as, “You have leaned this information because you used this good strategy.” (Ericsson, K. Anders, Vol 14)
If we think about memory as a physical event in the brain, we can see that memorizing material is like training a muscle. Repeated recruitment of sets of neurons creates the connection we want to have available not only at exam time but throughout life.
Clearly, that event is one that we remember,