Cognition:
• Studying and Building Memories
• Memory Storage
• Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory
Improvement
• Thinking, Concepts, and Creativity
• Solving Problems and Making Decisions
• Thinking and Language

 Memory Capacity Activity
 TED Talk: The Fiction of Memory by Elizabeth Loftus https://www.ted.com/playlists/196/the_complexity_of_ memory

MEMORY: The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Sensory Memory works as a filter. It allows us time to determine what to pay attention to.

 https://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/informationprocessing.html

 Explicit Memory: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”
 Effortful Processing: Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
 Automatic Processing: Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of welllearned information, such as word meanings.
 Implicit Memory: Retention independent of conscious recollection (skills we learn).

 https://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/categorizingmemory.html

 Iconic Memory: A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.
 Echoic Memory: A momentary sensory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.

Short-Term or Working Memory Use it or lose it!!!!!
Working with information…..
Chunking = Grouping items to make them easier to remember https://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/improving-shortterm-memory.html

Short-Term or Working Memory Use it or lose it!!!!!
Working with information…..
Mnemonic Devices = Techniques for using associations to memorize and retrieve information

 Read each sentence or phase and record what it stands for.
 Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally-
 Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain-
 Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge-
 King Phillip Cried Out For Good Soup-
 My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles-
 Super Man Helps Every One-

 Read each sentence or phase and record what it stands for.
 Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally-
(Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction)
 Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain-
(Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)
 Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge-
(E,G,B,D,F)
 King Phillip Cried Out For Good Soup-
(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)
 My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles-
(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune)
 Super Man Helps Every One-
(Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario)

 Retaining Information in the Brain
 Memories are NOT stored in one part of the brain.

Memory and the Brain
We are still learning about the role of the brain in
MEMORY. To what extent the brain is involved is still being determined.

 hippocampus --neural center in limbic system that helps process explicit memories for storage
 Processes explicit memories – then sent to multiple different regions.
Hippocampus

Long-Term Memory
Types of Long-Term Memory
Episodic memory
– memory of our own life (Personal facts)
Semantic memory
– knowledge of language, including rules, words, and meanings
Declarative memory
–
Stored knowledge called forth consciously as needed; includes episodic and semantic
Procedural memory
–
Storage of learned skills that does not require conscious recollection

DID YOU KNOW!
Flashbulb Memories are vivid recollections of events that are shocking or emotional
The SQ3R method of studying improves your ability to recognize and recall information

FACT: 59-year-old Akira Haraguchi recited from memory the first
83,431 decimal places of pi, earning a spot in the Guinness World
Records.
FACT: Super card sharks can memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than a minute
FACT: According to evidence, it's impossible to recall images with near perfect accuracy
Photographic memory – ability to form sharp, detailed visual images of a picture or page and to recall exactly what you saw.
DOES IT EXIST?

 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gift-of-endlessmemory/

Module 33: Forgetting, Memory,
Construction, and Memory
Improvement

• Self-serving personal histories
• Repression

FORGETTING
Types
Decay – fading away of memory over time
Amnesia – loss of memory as a result of a blow to head or brain damage. Other causes: Stress/Drugs
Interference – blockage of a memory by previous or subsequent memories or loss of a retrieval cue
•Proactive Interference: prior learning interferes with learning new information
• Retroactive Interference: newly learned information interferes with previously learned information

 Misinformation and Imagination
 Source amnesia (source misattribution)
 Déjà vu
 Discerning True and False Memories
 Repressed or Constructed Memories

• Eyewitness Testimony
•
It is often wrong
• Involves recognition
• Memory of event is often distorted
• Eyewitnesses can be misled by questioning

• Rehearse repeatedly
• Make the material meaningful
• Activate retrieval cues
• Use mnemonic devices
• Minimize interference
• Sleep more
• Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to help determine what you do not yet know

• Ways to boost creativity
– Develop your expertise
– Allow time for incubation
– Set aside time for the mind to roam freely
– Experience other cultures and ways of thinking

Module 35: Solving Problems and
Making Decisions

• Algorithms
– Step-by-step
• Heuristic
• Insight
• Confirmation bias
• Mental set

Forming Good and Bad Decisions and
Judgments
• Intuition
– Automatic unreasoned feelings and thoughts
– Seat of their pants
• The Representative Heuristic
– Prototype
•
– Likelihood of something
•
 Overconfidence
Belief perseverance
– Consider the opposite
Framing

Module 36: Thinking and Language

 https://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/whatis-language.html
 https://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/languageacquisition.html

• Receptive language
• Productive language
– Babbling stage
– One-word stage
– Two-word stage
– Telegraphic speech

•
•
• Aphasia
Broca’s Area
Wernicke’s Area

 What is language?
 https://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-islanguage.html
 Language Acquisition
 https://educationportal.com/academy/lesson/language-acquisition.html