Tag Archives: long-term memory

Where and What Matters when Studying for a Test

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The other day, my 16 year old daughter, Olivia, came home excited to share with me that she was the only student in her History class to pass a difficult test. Normally, I don’t hear about the results of her tests. In fact, she hates it if I ask her about school at all, assuming that my curiosity is actually a way of “trying to get in her business” or “accusing her of not keeping up with her school work”. But when she received a poor grade on a test a couple of weeks earlier, she suddenly became interested in some of the study tips I have been learning in my cognitive psychology class. Over a Route 66 Pharmacy Hot Fudge Sundae, we recalled her study habits before the poorly graded test and compared them to some of the research in my text book, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, by Bruce Goldstein. One particular strategy that caught her attention was the idea of matching her learning conditions to her testing conditions, based on the principles of encoding specificity and state-dependent learning.

Olivia likes to study at a big desk in our kitchen. There is lots of table space and she often listens to music while she studies. On the day of her test, she sat at a small desk in a quiet classroom. According to the principle of encoding specificity, we “encode information along with its context” (Goldstein, 2011, p.184). This means, when we learn something new, our brains not only encode the new information but information about the environment we are in as well. So, the theory is, if you study for a test in an environment similar or the same as the environment that you will be in while taking the test, you will increase your ability of remembering the information that you learned. Sound a bit unreal? We thought so too, except that research results have supported this theory (Goldstein, 2011).

In the text book, Goldstein (2011) describes a well known study performed by D.R Godden and Alan Baddeley in 1975. In a nutshell, they divided their participants into two groups and had one group learn a list of words on land while the other group learned the list of words wearing scuba gear underwater. Then they placed participants from both groups in each environment and asked them to recall the list of words they learned. The results showed that the participants who were in the same environment as when they were learning the words, recalled more words than those who were tested in a different environment (Goldstein, 2011).

The concept of state dependent learning is similar to encoding specificity, except that it pertains to the state a person is in when encoding and retrieving information. Olivia recalled that when she was studying for the poorly graded test she was very frustrated and annoyed because of an argument she had with her boyfriend. However, when she took the test, she was happy and energized because she had just finished taking her dance class. According to state dependent learning, she would have been able to retrieve more of the information she learned if she was frustrated and annoyed. Once again, it sounds a bit unreal, right? But just like encoding specificity, Goldstein (2011) presented research that supports this theory, such as  Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe’s 1989 “mood” experiment. In this experiment, participants learned words while in a happy or depressed mood. Two days later, the participants did an exercise to put them in the same or opposite mood they were in while learning the words, then they were tested. Those who were in the same mood recalled more words than those who were in the opposite mood (Goldstein, 2011).

After learning about encoding specificity and state-dependent learning, Olivia decided to study for her History test during her free periods at school. This allowed her to learn the information for the test in the same environment as she would be in when taking the test. Because her History class is always after her dance class, she also made a point to get her heart rate up and to put herself in a happy mood by dancing or exercising to music she likes for fifteen minutes before studying. As mentioned, her efforts appeared to work because she did very well on her History test. Of course, one must include other study habits that may have influenced Olivia’s test results, such as her note taking  during a lecture and time spent reading or talking about the material. However, the results of Olivia’s efforts to match her learning conditions to her test conditions, along with results of formal research, proves that it is a technique worth considering when studying for your next exam at school, at work or maybe even at a game show!

Reference:

 Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Matching conditions of encoding and retrieval. In Cognitive psychology: Mind, research and everyday experience (3rd ed., pp. 183-186). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Remembering Dreams

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Why is it that sometimes we are able to wake from a dream and remember it exactly but throughout the day we find it harder and harder to remember the information in the dream? Not only do we find it more difficult to remember the dream, but sometimes by the end of the day we are only left with only an impression of the dream. Maybe the reason could be that the process of remembering semantic meanings in memory is better for recalling information than episodic memories enables us to retrieve the overall impression we have of the dream. Maybe it is possible that we interpret our dreams into a semantic meaning, enabling us to relate the experience to what we already have stored in our long term memory. By capturing the dream’s semantic meaning instead of the precise detail we are able to associate it with things we already know thus making it easier for the dream to be stored in our long-term memory. Either way, the focus of this paper is more on why we are able to remember some dreams, unable to remember others and only remember parts of some.
Explanations as to why we easily forget our dreams have been numerous over the decades. Several researches conducted in the area of dream recall have suggested that because we have a limited capacity for short term memory distractions and interferences that occur immediately after we wake up are in competition for that limited capacity. Because we are unable to intake so much information into our short-term memory the dreams are replaced by these other stimuli that are competing for our memory space. Our dreams are therefore forgotten and replaced by these wakeful stimuli (Koulack and Goodenough, 1976). That sounds like a pretty reasonable assessment considering that we do know that the short term memory has a capacity for between five to seven items that can be held for 15- 30 seconds until they are transferred into long-term memory by processes such as rehearsal, encoding, and chunking (Goldstein, 2011,pgs 118-126). So, why then, are we able to remember some of our dreams?
Consolidation is the process that converts fragile memories that can be distributed to a more permanent state to where they are not so easily disrupted (Goldstein, 2011, pg. 193). So if I dream something at 9 o’clock at night maybe my brain is imploring chunking to remember that dream and then later consolidate it over the hippocampus where I am able to connect it through other parts of my brain without the use of the hippocampus and thus making it a part of my long term memory. This is possible but for most of us our dreams are forgotten over time, at least bits and pieces. Perhaps, while dreaming, I am able to form connections in a deeper, semantic meaning of the overall experience of my dreams and therefore connect it with what is previously stored in my long- term memory. Maybe this accelerated the memory process where my hippocampus is not needed at all to remember the dreams because I have at some level already stored information that connects the pieces of the dream together to form a memory. So instead of me actually remembering my dream I am remembering the overall semantic meaning and “filling in the gaps” as they make sense to me, a theory relatively close to what Freud’s theory of dreaming was; that is the analytical approach (Freud, 1965).
Another idea as to why we may be able to remember some of our dreams and not others may be influenced by primacy and recency effects. Primacy effects being the ability to remember stimuli at the beginning of a sequence and possibly rehearsing it in order to transfer them into long- term memory (Goldstein, 2011, pg. 151). The ability to experience these dreams earlier on and then rehearse them gives reason to believe that they are only the ones stored in long term memory and therefore are remembered. Recency effects are those stimuli that are presented last in a list and are most recent in short term memory (Goldstein, 2011, pg.153). Research has found that dreams sometimes are easier to recall if had earlier in the night and sometimes easier to recall when experienced in the morning so long as numerous dreams were not reported (Meier et, al, 1968).
There are many different possibilities to why some of us are able to access our dreams, why some of us are able to access some of our dreams, why some of us are unable to access any of our dreams, and why some of us experience a combination of the above. Whatever the definitive answer, research as well as experience has shown us we have a long way to go in understanding this area of the mind as well as human experience.

References:
Freud, S. (1965). The Interpretation of Dreams. The Hearst Corporation. Avon Books
Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.
Koulack, D., & Goodenough, D. R. (1976). Dream recall and dream recall failure: An arousal-retrieval model. Psychological Bulletin, 83(5), 975-984. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.83.5.975
Meier, C., Ruef, H., Ziegler, A., and Hall, C. (1968) Forgetting of Dreams in the Laboratory. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 26, Issue, pp. 551-557. doi: 10.2466/pms.1968.26.2.551