Another interesting article..

I will summarise what i just saw.. Its quite memorable.. haha..


Demonstration 1: Short Term Memory

First, Mr. Anthony read out a three-digits number, then students would write that number down, showing that we remember the number. Secondly, one more digit will be added each time. The numbers went on to 12 digits. After the read out of numbers, the class compare what they wrote with the actual numbers that were read. All of the students can remember at least 5 digits and at most 9 digits, with the mean of 7 digits.

This number 7 corresponds with the research that said that we can whole about 7 peices of information in our short term memory. the only way to imoprove this is to seperate the numbers into chunks. For example, chunk 19900730 into 1990 and o730. Then try to make sense of the numbers. 1990, my year of birth, 0730 my month and date of birth. This techniques of associating short term memory with long term memory will help improve our the capacity of short term memory.


Demonstration 2: Short term memory: Words

Mr. Anthony read out several sleepy words and the students listen. After all the words are read, the students were asked to retrieve as many words as possible. The mean number of correct words is, again, 7. This indicates that we can put only Secabout 7 pieces of information into our short term memory. From this demonstration, we learned 5 things about memory.

First, there is something called reconstructive memory. In the demonstration, 5 students out of 16 recalled the word "sleep", which, surprisingly, havent been said. This is because all other words have some kind of connection with the word "sleep" and that 5 students constructed the memory of the word from other words. This is also called "Dejavu".

Secondly, we tend to remember the first few words we hear and the last few words.

Thirdly, most, if not all, of us remember the word "night" This is because the word "night" was said three times, while the other words were said once. This demonstrates that repetition plays an important part in memorization. Repetitions increase the tendency to remember.

Fourth, many students remember the word "pineapple" eventhough the word was said in the middle. This is because "pineapple" stands out as other words are all associated with "night".Distinctiveness as shown in the pineapple example also increase the tendency to remember.

Lastly, chunking is, again, the key to memorization. People who remember the word "toss" also remember the word "turn" because they chunk "toss" and turn" together.


Demonstration 3: Meaning Enhances Recall

Our instruction was to look at 20 cards each with a word and a letter, A or B. If the card has a letter A, then we have to count the number of syllables in the word shown with the letter. If the card has B, then we need to judge whether the word is pleasant or unpleasant. After 20 words, we were asked to write down all the words that we can remember.

The most number of words remembered was 20 and the least was 10, with even distribution in between. This shows that each person’s ability to remember varies.

What we remember depends on who we are and our experiences.

Now let’s look at what words are remembered.
The class result shows that:
3 students recalled more A words and B words.
4 students recalled the same number of A words and B words.
9 students recalled more B words and A words.

This evidently illustrates that the tendency to remember increase when there is meaning to the input information. For the B words, we were asked to judge whether the word is pleasant or unpleasant, this creates meaning to our brain so we remember it better. For A words, we were asked to count the syllables, which makes no meaning to our brain, therefore, we remember the words less vividly. In conclusion, “meaning enhances memory recall.”

More abt ur brain...

-We are capable of remembering 100 trillions things, which is fascinating, but despite the vast capacity, we do forget things.

-Motivation, concentration and rehearsal enhance the ability to remember. This is why we need to concentrate when studying for a test.

-Information comes in to the sensory memory then into short-term memory then eventually into long-term memory. When we want to retrieve information, the information will come from the long-term memory to the short-term memory and out

-The long term memory is limitless and the short-term memory can hold only about 7 pieces of information before losing them or before transferring them in to the long-term memory. To increase the capacity of short-term memory, the method of chunking could be used. Chunking is to group information together. Relating old memory with new input will also increase the tendency to remember new information. Using mnemonic devices will also increase the tendency to remember.

- Lastly, there is no specific part of the brain that store memory; instead, the whole brain contributes to memory. When a neuron dies, we forget the information held by that neuron.