Last week, prior to beginning to study for our midterm exam, I quickly sifted through the notes I had taken for lessons one through six. I wanted to see what information I could easily retrieve from my long-term memory. While going through the retrieval process, I noticed that lesson three on the topic of perception seemed to be the easiest for me to recall. I didn’t understand why that lesson in particular would be better stored in my long-term memory over any other, except that I had written my last blog post about perception. Fast forward to this week’s lesson on encoding and retrieval of memory form long-term memory into working memory and I asked myself that same question I had last week. Why was lesson three easier for me to remember?

To begin to answer my question, I thought about the levels of processing theory, or “the idea that memory depends on how information was encoded” (Goldstein, 2015). I had, for the most part, utilized the same techniques for all six lessons. I read the commentary and textbook chapters as well as took notes on each lesson. Thus, each lesson should have been deeply processed and encoded into my long-term memory similarly. That wasn’t the case, so I turned my attention to the different types of encoding I used to store the information of lesson three into my long-term memory.

The first thing I remembered is associating bottom-up and top-down processing information with an activity my husband and I enjoy, star gazing. I had encoded their meanings with an association to myself. I was utilizing the self-reference effect which, in turn, helped to strengthen that knowledge and encode it “deeper” into my long-term memory. Also, throughout that week, my husband would give me examples of perception and asked if he was using top-down processing. I would have to retrieve the knowledge of top-down processing from my long-term memory and decide whether it was or wasn’t. Inadvertently, I was experiencing the testing effect, as he was “quizzing” me on the processes. Again, helping to strengthen my memory of lesson three’s information.

Visual Imagery also played a part in helping to strengthen the encoding of the terms and concepts of the Gestalt Grouping Principles of lesson three into my long-term memory. In my last blog post I associated the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor with the Principle of Good Continuation. In picturing the star formations in my working memory, acting as a retrieval cue, I was able to better retrieve the information of the principle from my long-term memory. Picturing the stars instantly cued my long term memory to transfer the Gestalt Grouping Principles into my working memory.

So, to answer my initial question, the way that I had encoded the concepts from lesson three using the self-reference effect, testing effect, visual images, and retrieval cues is why it was easier to recall over the other lessons. Reading and taking notes, while helpful, wasn’t as effective in creating strong memories in my long-term memory. For the other lessons I had fallen victim to the familiarity effect, I was recognizing the information but not fully remembering it (Goldstein, 2015).

Works Cited

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Cengage Learning.