I thought the lecture on memory storage/retrieval and encoding was very interesting as we were discussing it in class. Everyone aims to gain knowledge in order to function in life and to make everyday tasks possible and easy to achieve. As a Penn State student, I am constantly learning new information that I have to store in my memory. When we learn something and gain knowledge, we store it in our memory by the process of encoding. Memory is defined as the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. From that definition it is easy to see that our memory is very complex and the way we encode the information is very important. People use different techniques of encoding in order to store the information in their short-term (working) memory or their long-term memory.
While I was in high school, I often used encoding techniques such as maintenance rehearsal and chunking in order to encode the information which I was learning. I often just looked at my notes over and over until I had it in my memory. Little did I know, the information I was learning by maintenance rehearsal was being stored in my short-term memory. I would study the information up to the date of a test but then right after the test I would stop looking at the notes for that certain section that we learned. I noticed that if I were asked to recall that information at a later date, I couldn’t remember some information and certain details. That was because the process I was using to encode the information was not storing it in my long-term memory. I found that this type of encoding is very useful when I needed to store the memory for one specific event such as a test, but when I needed to retain the information I learned for the whole school year or a long period of time I needed to find a different way to encode to information into my long-term memory. In class we learned about the concept of elaborate rehearsal encoding, which is making meaningful connections to the information being stored within our memory. I used elaborate rehearsal although I was not aware of what it was at the time and I learned that it is a much better way to study and encode memory, especially in college.
2 thoughts on “Memory & Encoding”
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I can really related to what was said in this post about rehearsal and different studying techniques used in high school. I used to be able to get by pretty easy. The night before a test I would cram and just use maintenance rehearsal and chunking to memorize all the information. Now being a colleges student, things are very different. I’ve found that these studying techniques do not work well especially when you have to take a cumulative final. Now I’ve learned to use elaborative rehearsal to make sure everything that I study goes into long term memory and I won’t forget it. This will help me out a lot throughout all of my classes and even the rest of my college years.
I also found this lecture very interesting because I realized I was too not practicing elaborate rehearsal memory like I should have been. After learning this in class, I thought back to my previous experiences with schooling and found it true that I remembered only the concepts and ideas that I had made connections with, such as learning the information a few times in different classes or seeing it used outside of the classroom. While maintenance rehearsal works for a short period of time, for something that is cumulative such as a final at the end of the year, this type of learning will not be enough. I also have recently tried to focus more on elaborate rehearsal and have noticed that it is much more useful and actually ends up saving time which is important for any college student. As long as you put the effort in to try and make the connections, it really does work.