Tma01

There are several ways in which we can improve our memory. I will first discuss how mental images can help us improve our recognition secondly I will focus on concepts and finally schemas. I will be focusing on each one and how organization can improve our recall.

To help us in recollecting a certain word we can visualize a vivid and outlandish mental image in our head to assist us in remembering the word.
In ‘Starting with psychology’ (2007), Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson (1975) developed the keyword technique to help us recall words through a mental image, for example the French word ‘poubelle’ translated is the English word for ’bin’, to remember the word, spoors et al (2007) gave the example of a person holding their nose indicating a bad smell ‘pooh’, taking the lid off a bin shaped as a ‘bell’, (poohbell). The keyword technique can contribute to learning a new language a lot more effectively.
The keyword technique was also illustrated in an experiment by Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson (1975) when a number of participants were given 60 Spanish words to learn.
50% of these were given the keyword technique to memorize the word, whereas the other 50% were not.
The experiment resulted in the participants who were given the keyword technique got 88% of the words correct and the others only got 28% correct.
Again this experiment shows that the visual prompts can assist us in recalling information a lot more precisely.
Moving onto concepts, this is a process where our mind organises our thoughts into categories.
As adults we use concepts every day, so much that it becomes instinctive…for example our concept of a table is a piece of furniture which has four legs, a flat top, made of wood etc., however a stool has similar properties, yet in our mind we can rationalise that these two items have completely different uses, as we know not to eat off a stool or sit on a table. If the definition is vague it becomes a ‘fuzzy concept’, therefore we put...