Psychology_Tma01_Y163

TASK 1 PART B Thinking is one of the most difficult processes to describe; the people who work in this area are called Cognitive Psychologists. Thinking mostly involves the use of words (semantic thought) and the use of mental images (iconic thought). There is also another type of thinking which is called enactive thought. This is when we may do actions along with our thoughts, for example driving a car. When talking to someone about this, we may do the actions. These are all different ways to help remember our thoughts. I am going to discuss the how the use of mental images, concepts and schemas can help improve our memory. Firstly I am going to discuss the use of mental images. We mainly use semantic thought; however it has been proven that the use of mental images can help us remember more. A mental image is basically the image you create of some information in order to easily recall it. It will help if the image is unusual or distinctive as more thought is going into it. This can help improve our memory as it can cue other information as well. Mnemonics are one way to use mental images, for example ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’ is used to remember the colours of the rainbow. These are easy to learn and easy to recall. The ‘method of loci’ is another technique and in this, people will link their mental images together in a sequence. The more thought we put into this information, the easier it will then be to recall. Using mental images when learning a new language has proved effective; this is called the key word technique. An example of this is la poubelle, which is the French word for ‘bin’. You could create a mental image of a smelly bell shaped bin which could help you remember that it is la poubelle. Raugh and Atkinson (1975) developed this key word technique. They carried out an experiment in which 2 groups of participants were asked to learn 60 Spanish words. One group of participants were asked to use this key word technique while the other group were not; this did show in the results as 88% who used the key word technique could remember the words, compared with 28% for the other group. Secondly, I am going to discuss the use of forming concepts. This is the way in which we categorise our information in order to remember it. When information is in categories, we may remember one item and then it can cue some more information and we can recall some more. This can be helpful for a shopping list, for example we may have remembered to get some apples (fruit) and then remember other items in our ‘fruit’ category. An experiment was carried out by Bousfield (1953). In this experiment, he asked participants to memorise a list of 60 words, these could be divided into four categories. The words were presented at random, however people did tend to remember them in the categories. For example if someone remembered strawberry and apple, they would then remember lemon and orange. I actually tried out this experiment in the Starting with Psychology (2007) textbook and I did remember more words when I had the headings of the categories. This shows that categorising our thoughts can definitely help improve our memory. Mandler (1967) also did some research on categorising our thoughts. He suggested that we will learn information without trying when it is organised. He carried out an experiment to test this; two groups of participants were given 100 cards with a word printed on each one. They were asked to sort the cards into groups, one group of participants were asked to memorise the words, whereas the other group were not. After this experiment and when they were both tested, both groups actually remembered the same amount. This shows we could actually categorise our thoughts without realising. Finally, I am going to discuss the use of schemas and how they can help improve our memory. A schema is how you file away all your knowledge about many different things, it is as if your memory is a filing cabinet and stored away in each file is all the information about everything you have experienced. An example of this is when you go to the cinema, if you have been before and have stored your memories of this experience, then you can use that schema for each time you go so you remember what to do when you get there, for example buying the tickets then buying some snacks, then finding your seat. If you have never done this before, then you will create a schema for this on your visit. Then you can activate it on future trips. Using schemas means our memories are stored in an organised way and this means we can improve our memory by using these. Some experiments were carried out by Bransford and Johnson (1972); these were showing the role of schemas and how they worked. In one experiment, participants were asked to read through a passage and then recall it as accurate as they could. Half the participants were given the title of the passage and the other half were not. The title of the passage was ‘Washing Clothes’ and those who were not told the title had difficulty in recalling the information whereas those who were given the title could recall it easier. Spoors et al. (2007, p. 45) states that ‘the title provides a schema so that information can be stored appropriately and recalled more easily’. In this essay, I have shown that creating a mental image of information can help us recall it easily, especially if the image is unusual for example the smelly bin, la pooh-bell (la poubelle). I have also shown that categorising our thoughts can help us recall information and they can cue other information within one group for example apple and orange. Finally, I have shown using schemas helps improve our memory as we create them from our own experience for example going to the cinema. Once we have had an experience, we create the schema for it so we can then use it easily in the future. These are the main aspects of our thoughts and they all help to improve our memory. Word Count 1,056 References 1. Spoors, P., Dyer, E.W. and Finlay, L. (2007) Starting with Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University