Tma_01

TMA 01 Task 1 The following essay will explain how we can help improve our memory by organising our thinking, using mental images, concepts and schemas, providing evidence to support my views. A mental image is a picture you have in your mind of what it is you are thinking about. If you form a mental image of any information then we are more likely to remember it. This works even better when we think of the images as large, colourful, weird and wonderful things, for example if we were shopping and had to remember bananas, we could remember it by imagining your phone was a massive banana. Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson (1975) experimented with this idea with two groups with something called the key word technique. Both groups were asked to learn a list of 60 Spanish words but only one group were taught to use the key word technique. When the groups were tested later the groups using key words scored an average of 88%, whereas only 28% was scored for those not using key words. This is just one experiment which suggests that mental images can improve our memory. A concept is a way of organising our thoughts into categories. If we categorise our thoughts, we can easily recall the information in groups. For example if we think of Fruit as a concept, it would contain sub concepts and then further sub concepts. We could divide fruit into categories such Apples, Oranges etc then we apply our concepts to use a set of defining features, such as colour, what they taste like, what they feel like etc An experiment by Weston Bousfield (1953) examined participants learning a list of sixty words. These could be divided into four categories. The information was presented in a very random order but when the participants remembered them they tended to recall them in groups of the same category e.g. if they remembered daisy they would also remember rose and daffodil. More research by George Mandler (1967) suggests that when we organise information we learn it even though we are not making any effort to memorize it. He experimented with two groups of participants where by each participant was given 100 cards, each card had a word printed on it. Only one group was asked to remember the words on the cards, the other group were told to just sort the cards. When both groups were tested the group who were told to just sort the cards remembered just as many words as the group told to memorize. These are two examples of how forming concepts can improve our memory. A schema is a word used to describe a mental framework in which knowledge is developed as a result of experience. In this framework we file all information and knowledge about certain subjects, people, situations or groups of people. We can apply our knowledge of past similar situations to help us cope and act correctly. Schema’s can provide clues to prompt our memory. There are a number of topics within Schemas, such as perception, how our senses pick up information and interpret it, reconstructive memory, sometimes we reconstruct our memory to not what happened but what fits better with existing schemas. The leading question, how when questioning witnesses is it vital how we word a question so as not to prejudice the answer, normally just changing one word could alter a response. First impressions, how when we see someone for the first time, we start to unconsciously form an impression of what sort of person they are, based on physical appearance, we then immediately put that person into a particular schema. A stereotype is a schema regarding a group of people we assume belongs to a particular group. John Bransford & Marcia Johnson ( 1972) carried out an experiment which showed how much of a role schemas play in our understanding and recall of information. Two groups were given a passage to read, half the group were told the title of the passage the other half were not. The half that was not given the title before they read the passage had greater difficulty in understanding it and had a tougher time trying to recall the details. As soon as they were told the title to the passage, it all made sense and all the information fell into place. So without a title, we do not know which schema this particular piece of writing belongs to so our level of understanding is poor and so much more difficult to recall any details. This example shows how schemas play a big part in how we store information about the world around us and file it so as we can easily recall it. This essay attempted to explore how we organise our thinking using mental images, concepts and schemas thus improving our memory. I have show examples of mental images and how when we imagine them to be big, colourful images we are more likely to remember them. I have described what concepts are and how we sort things into different categories in order to remember them again, showing examples of research. I have also explained how schemas play a big part in how we store information and how we file data in order to recall it easily. I have presented this and shown examples of research which supports this theory. All three, mental images, concepts and schemas play a very important role in how we remember and continue to improve our memory. References: Spoors P., Dyer E.W and Finlay, L. (2007) Starting with Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University