Investigating The Intrinsic Differences Among The Generation Task And The Affects It Has On Memory Essay

In the last half century several theories have emerged with regard to the best model for human memory. In each of these models there was a specific way to help people recall words and

The study of creation of false memories has been a topic of interest since the 1930s when Bartlett (1932) conducted the first experiment on the topic. Though the results of this experiment were never replicated, they contributed greatly to research by distinguishing between reproductive and reconstructive memory (Bartlett 1932 as cited in Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Reproductive memory refers to accurate production of material from memory and is assumed to be associated with remembering simplified materials (e.g., lists). Reconstructive memory emphasizes the active process of filling in missing elements while remembering and is associated with materials rich in meaning (e.g., stories).

This experiment is based on previous research done. For example, in 1969, in a research by Bower and Clark, no difference in the immediate recall scores of both groups was noted, but when later asked to recall, those who used narrative chaining recalled an average of 93% of the words compared to the control group which only recalled an average of 13% of words. In another experiment, participants who used narrative chaining remembered six times more information than participants who learned by simply repeating the words to themselves (Loftus, 1980). Narrative chaining is particularly useful when a person wants to remember information in a particular order. The aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of narrative chaining on memory. It is hypothesized that in a group of 59 participants aged 10-69 years old, participants who use narrative chaining to remember a list of words will remember a higher number and percentage of words when asked to write down as many words as possible through serial recall compared to participants who use maintenance rehearsal.

74. Raymond remembers, “When I was a sophomore, I took the hardest physics test of my life, and I was happy with my C.” This memory represents a(n)

On the other hand, the set of talent and role that is refined through time, concern that a person live out while completely doing away with the unpredictable of hereditary characteristics. Therefore, a person invests their time and effort into something that they are good at even if it is not in their lineage. For this reason, when a person is born with certain distinctiveness and even though their nurture may have influences on their personalities to change or be improved, their genes encompass a large influence on how they will live their life. Children may see their friend cheat on a test at school but will not do the same, because they now it wrong because of punishment indirect or direct learning from their parents (Benokraitis, 2010). For this, “one strategy is longitudinal research in which children's initial characteristics can be observed to change over time in relation to specific parenting experiences” (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington & Bornstein, 2000, p. 223).

Messages become shorter when passed from one person to the next. Memories can be modified to fit one’s personal social experiences (i.e., conventionalization). Memory is unreliable, sensory stimuli are not stored as is but are actively transformed by the brain for storage depending on individual factors such as personal relevance and expectations. The most essential information is better remembered, but what is considered “most essential” may depend on an individual’s experiences. This suggests memory does not function as a video recording, but is a highly complex process that is influenced by an individual’s levels of attention, motivation, expectations, experiences, emotional state, etc. It also suggests that memory is an active process that involves constructing narratives out of events rather than passively recording

This supports the idea of an immediate memory store for items that are neither visual nor phonological and that draw on long-term memory to link the related words. It is used as both the Phonological Loop and the Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad have specific roles and the Central Executive has very limited storage capacity so as a result there was no where to store both visual and acoustic information. The Episodic Buffer is an extra storage system that has in common with all working memory units, a limited capacity. It is handy and can integrate information from the Central Executive, The Phonological Loop, The Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad and also information from the Long-Term Memory.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this experiment was to test whether a delay before recall would affect the serial position effect. The experiment was done by getting participants to take part in a simple tests; hearing words read out, then after they are read out, recalling them and writing them down. Two of these tests took place, one without a gap before recall, and one with. The results only partly supported previous research, with both tests showing a higher number of people remembering words at the start of the list, but unlike previous research findings, the last words of the list were not remembered

The current study was created to retest reproducibility of Slamecka and Graf results about participants remembering words better when they generated the words than when they read the words in a sample of undergraduate students at Texas A&M University (Slamecka and Graf, 1978). Nineteen undergraduate students at Texas A&M University participated in an experiment where one group was given a set of words and were told to memorize the words. The other group was given one word and the first letter of the second word and was told to generate the second word. It was hypothesized that the group with the participants who generated the second word would remember those sets of words better than the other group. Results showed that the group who generated the second word significantly memorized the words better, the p value being < .05. More in depth explanations involving more variables are discussed such as the five rules, or the within subjects, and their effect on the generation effect as well as future directions.

Research has shown that there is “greater activation in the left inferior frontal and medial temporal lobes” (Stanford, 2006, p. 208) during the encoding of words which were later remembered as compared to those which were forgotten. The sensations perceived by sensory nerves are decoded in the hippocampus of the brain into a single experience (Mastin, 2010). The hippocampus analyses new information and compares and asssociates it with previously stored memory (Mastin, 2010). Human memory is associative in that new information can be remembered better if it can be associated to previously acquired, firmly consolidated information (Mastin, 2010). The various pieces of information are then stored in different parts of the brain (Mastin, 2010). Though the exact method by which this information is later identified and recalled has yet to be discovered, it is understood that ultra-short term sensory memory is converted into short term memory which can then later be consolidated into long term memory (Mastin, 2010).

Allport, Postman (1947) and Loftus (1974) also support Bartlett’s idea of reconstructive memory. Loftus mainly focused on the reliability of eyewitness testimonies. As done in this experiment, Loftus and Palmer conducted a study on the effects of wording a question differently and how that would affect the answer. In the experiment the researchers used two different verbs on two different test groups. One was “contact” the other was “smashed”. The effect of this was a change in the speed estimated by the participants. The verb “contact” gave an average speed of 32mph while the verb “smash” gave an average of 41 mph in the experiment conducted by Loftus. There is a positive correlation between word use and how memory is retrieved because of it.

The experiment is as follows; one hundred students, randomly selected, participated in a context dependent memory experiment. twenty five were in each of the four following learn-recall situations; hot room-hot room, hot room-cold room, cold room-cold room, cold room-hot room. They were asked to spend thirty minutes learning a list of thirty words. The next day they were asked to recall those words in a fifteen minute time period. There are no results.

Using paired wordlists of nouns, Bower and Gordon demonstrated this in their 1970 experiment. In their study, they had undergraduate students learn paired wordlists by one of four methods – rehearsal of the two words; reading a sentence in which one of the words acted upon the other (i.e. “The boy hit the ball.”); creating a sentence which linked the two words (i.e. “Nancy threw her bag on the table.”) or creating a mental image of the two words together (i.e. imagining a basket of flowers) (Bower & Gordon, 1970). Results found that students who employed imagery did better on recalling the word pairs in comparison to other methods and those who utilized rehearsal had the lowest recall rate out of the four groups (Bower & Gordon, 1970).

Prior to the early 1970s the prominent idea of how memories were formed and retrieved revolved around the idea of processing memory into specific stores (Francis & Neath, 2014). These memory stores were identified as sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. In contrast to this idea, two researchers named Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart proposed an idea linking the type of encoding to retrieval (Goldstein, 2015). This idea is known as the levels of processing theory. According to this theory, memory depends on the depth of processing that a given item is received by an individual (Goldstein, 2015). Craik and Lockhart stressed four points in supporting their theory. First, they argued that memory was the result of a series of analyses, each level of the series forming a deeper level of processing than the preceding level (Francis & Neath, 2014). The shallow levels of processing were believed to hold less importance and are defined as giving little attention to meaning of an item. Examples of which include focusing on how a word sounds or memorizing a phone number by repeating it over and over again (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The deeper levels processing involve paying close attention to the meaning of an item and relating that meaning to something else, an example of which would be focusing on the meaning of a word rather than just how the word sounds (Francis & Neath, 2014) (Goldstein, 2015). The second point Craik and Lockhart

Memory is a very important tool to our everyday lives. Without memory, we would not be able to function very productively. You can look at someone suffering with Alzheimer’s disease and see the effects of the inability to make new memories, as well as lost and confused memory. According to what I have read in the textbook, the foundation of our speech and learning is our memory.