EdPsy 399OL
L5Q1 Forgetting-Required
Kimberly Fitzer
Instructor Tom Anderson
The unfortunate
occurrence of forgetting essential, or even nonessential information, is a
human condition. Furthermore, it seems
to occur indiscriminately, across age barriers, and across genders. The difficult task of sorting, associating
and reorganizing information so that it makes sense is not limited to just the
elderly, or the very young. Children often forget their belongings, leaving
them behind as new stimulus overwhelms their already busy brains. When confronted with their forgetfulness,
they cannot recall why or where they misplaced their new mittens, or their
brother’s bicycle. Young adults often
forget assignments, appointments, and other seemingly important information, as
easily as they change their clothes. In
addition, we, as adults, who should know better, are continually dogged by
nagging thoughts that something has been overlooked. Who has not entered a room to locate
something, only to find that once there, all remembrance of that item has
totally escaped one’s mind. On the other
hand, to be en route to a distant locale, when suddenly the realization that
something has been left behind looms large, and sure enough, the one item
needed most is sitting at home on the kitchen table. These breakdowns in the processing, storing
and retrieval of information are at once frustrating and inevitable. We are
simply incapable of storing and retrieving huge amounts of data in our short or
long-term memories, and in our busy, demanding, and activity packed lives, we are
expected to do just that.
George Miller, in his
landmark paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing
Information,” wrote that there is a clear and definite limit to our ability to
identify information beyond a certain number of stimuli. He called it the “span of absolute judgment,”
in that the level of accuracy of one’s ability to recall specific information
begins to fall off after having reached critical overload in short term
memory. Miller proposes that the limit
is approximately seven bits of information, give or take one or two (Miller,
1956). Test subjects in cited
experiments could only accurately remember six or seven musical tones played in
succession, or five to six dots flashed on a screen. Because the “magical number seven” became the
“constant” in a number of experiments, Miller concluded that this had to be
more than mere coincidence.
How, then, can we
ever hope to remember any amount of information long enough to really learn it
well? The answer seems to lie in how we
process information. We can assign
meaning to a stimulus by association with other stimuli, thus developing
patterns. This is called pattern
recognition (Bruning, et.al, 1999). In
education, it is also sometimes referred to as chunking and
categorization. In order to assist
students in learning complex and lengthy bundles of information, it is
important for teachers to break down the material into small “chunks,”
particularly with elementary school-age children (Bruning, 1999). Another strategy used in the classroom is to
begin teaching by referencing what students already know about a subject, and
then constructing connections to the material that is to be learned. This helps students to cognitively bridge
the gap between what is familiar and what is new information (Harris, 1995).
Students often have
difficulty in remembering what was taught the day before, or even a few minutes
before. Unfortunately, as much as this
frustrates and disappoints teachers, it is not unusual, and can even be
anticipated. Because the brain can only
process a certain amount of information at a time, teachers need to be aware of
exactly how much information can be presented in one session, before much is
lost to decay. To improve retention and
acquisition of knowledge, it is suggested that more than one sensory input may
be helpful; for example visual and auditory stimuli together would have far greater impact than just auditory cues
alone (Bruning, 1999). Many teachers,
including myself, have abandoned the traditional lecture format precisely
because of this discovery. Besides the
likelihood that a student’s attention may wander and fail to properly process
the information, lecture alone is not a particularly effective method of instructional
delivery for school-age children. It is
far more useful, I have found, to employ a variety of visual, audio, written
and tactile stimuli to assist in perception.
Further, as we grow
older, our memory may also suffer from a decreased ability to encode and
retrieve information. We often joke
about forgetting an important name, event or fact as “having a senior
moment.” However, studies have indicated
that item or content memory (memory that stores and retrieves facts and content
information) may be less impacted by age than context, or source memory
(Gilsky, Rubin & Davidson 2001).
Older adults may have no problem remembering a particular event, but
cannot remember why the event occurred, or when. Experiments conducted on elderly adults concluded
that certain areas of the brain might deteriorate as we age. These areas, chiefly the frontal lobe area,
may be instrumental initially in linking the item memory with the contextual
memory; declining function in the frontal lobes may cause an inability to
recall important information that is pertinent to the item (Gilsky, et.al,
2001). One may recall a birth date, but
fail to recall exactly whose birthday it is.
It seems ironic that
our memory appears to undergo a reversal in development as we age: as young children, we lack the ability to
process large amounts of information, yet we also lose the ability again in our
sunset years. Even in our most
productive and efficient stages of cognitive development, we still are really
only capable of remembering a limited amount of sensory stimuli. Certain learning and perceptual strategies
may assist our ability to encode and retrieve information, such as chunking,
association and categorization. By
applying these techniques to classroom instruction, teachers can enhance
learning and improve information retention and acquisition.
References
Bruning, Roger H.,
Schraw, Gregory J., & Ronning, Royce R. 1999. Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, Third Edition.
Gilsky, Elizabeth H.,
Rubin, Susan R., Davidson, Patrick S.R.
2001 Source Memory in Older Adults:
An Encoding or Retrieval Problem?
Reprinted in the Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on
http://www.apa.org/journals/xlm/press_releases/september_2001/xlm2751131.html. 1-4.
Miller, George
A. 1956.
The Magical Number Seven: Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing
Information. Originally published in
The Psychological Review, 1956.
vol. 63, pp. 81-97. Retrieved
from the World Wide Web on
http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html