Tma_01_Starting_with_Psychology

Task 1 In this essay I am going to write about the many different strategies and examples of how our memory can be enhanced by the techniques of mental images, concepts and schemas. I am going to describe how they each play a part in our everyday lives, and how we can learn and recognise that they can help us order our thoughts. Organisation can vastly improve our memory because it creates simple mental lists for our brain to process one step at a time, without the overload of information that we can often suffer to work around. Firstly I am going to explain the use of mental images. Mental images are pictures we hold in our minds of certain objects to help us recognise or understand meanings. This is a commonly used technique and can help us learn through association. Key words are very useful and can be used well in learning new languages. A good example of key words has been referred to in the French word ‘poubelle’ which means bin. The key in this is the pronunciation (pooh-bell) and can trigger imagery of an unpleasant smell in a confined area, such as a bell, in this case. This example was later used for an experiment that took place by Raugh and Atkinson (1975). Participants were asked to learn a list of Spanish words. Half were taught how to use the key word technique by being given a variable for each word, which can help prompt their memory. This became a very successful method and resulted in this group remembering more words than those that hadn’t learn this technique. This is where concepts become a similar method of organising your thinking, but could be perhaps easier to appreciate for people who tend to use the left hemisphere of their brain more. A concept is the process of your brain recognising and organising things that belong to similar categories, such as; animals. Animals being a species, but there lots of different breeds, mammals, birds etc. This is a more logical and factual process of organising information. This can often be confusing for the brain and cause us to automatically presume how things should be or we work up an image of how we expect things to be. This is where metal images and concepts are closely related. Mental images allow us to picture what we already know; concepts allow us to invent what we could know about this certain object in the category. This could mean that for some children it is hard to identify certain things. For example, applying labels can be very difficult. A child could hear or see a man and automatically identify them as their dad, when in fact, they are a stranger. (52) As research goes on we can appreciate that concepts and organising information can be very useful and enable us to learn things easier and quicker. Organising information without making a point of learning it can still sink into our memory, causing us to learn without trying. Mandler (1967) held an experiment proving this suggestion. Mandler took two groups of participants, who were given a pack of 100 cards each. Both groups were to sort the cards into groups. One group was told to memorise the words, where as the other group was told to just organise them. Both groups were then asked to write down as many words as they could remember. The results proved that both groups memorised roughly the same amount. Lastly on to schemas. Using a schema means we are usually already familiar with a situation and our brain creates a framework of thoughts, and associations based on our past experiences. We as humans tend to connections our thoughts and feelings with real factual things. I think fear can be a big part of schema, because one bad experience or hearing negative things can totally change our perspective of someone or something. For example, many people can be scared of visiting the dentist , this can be due to the overall atmosphere creating an uneasy feeling, therefore they associate it with that feeling every time, creating anxiety. But this feeling is not based on facts. When categorising occupations, dentist could possibly be on that list, and that’s what it is, an occupation. The rest is association. Information is a very important role in this method and sometimes our minds take advantage of what we already know. Bransford and Johnson (1972) conducted an experiment using a passage without a title. They collected two groups of participants, with one group knowing the title. This experiment was to test how well both groups of participants could collect information from the passage and recall details. Most participants who did not receive the title found it extremely difficult to follow and understand the information given. In this experiment it is shown that sometimes the schema is importantly provided by the title of something, this can make people recognise important information, therefore they can link the information with what is it for. Schema can also be an extremely useful technique in new situations, such as going to the cinema, as noted in the text book (55), going to a cinema you have never been to before may not always necessarily be a new experience. This is because your memory will store the information of going to a cinema, i.e. buying a ticket, going to the right screen, and watching the film, therefore this information will apply to each cinema, which allows you to deal with this different environment appropriately. Schema can also be shared with others, creating a different approach than other methods of organising our thoughts. Going to the cinema is a good example, as groups of people will also follow the same collection of information. It is also believed that schemas can create disadvantages, creating us to base our opinions on stereotypes due to the information we receive based on things such as gender, religion and appearance. This can create us to focus on the negative stereotype and ignore the important information that actually applies to the certain person/situation, creating us to be fearful or judgemental. Word Count: 1,022 Task 2 1. What did you find easiest and what did you find most challenging about doing this assignment' Why was this' Although I found this easier to understand, I found writing about mental images hard to explain/describe. I found it difficult to write about it without going too off topic. I also found it hard to keep focused on bringing the examples into this as evidence; I found it difficult to keep track of what goes where. Now I’ve finished I hope I’ve used the references appropriately. I enjoyed writing about schemas the most because this can be used in so many contexts and situations, without even releasing. It was very interesting to learn about, and realise how much this applies to my life. It was easier to write about. 2. What could you do to make the challenging area easier in the future' I think if I find a certain aspect more difficult I should allow more time to revisit this area, and ensure that I take more notes and write my thoughts/ideas as I go along so I don’t get muddled. Word Count: 150.