0:04 meaning effort imagery space time
0:06 distinctiveness value all of these
0:08 factors can help us when we learn
0:12 something new they can help us in the
0:14 encoding process which is when we
0:17 transform new information and new
0:21 experiences into long-term memories
0:23 everything that we can remember right
0:27 now has at some point been encoded right
0:30 we have had some new experience and that
0:32 experience has been stored in our
0:35 long-term memories and when we go to
0:37 remember it again what we're doing is
0:40 we're retrieving that memory from our
0:43 long-term memory system now we can
0:47 encode lots of different things we can
0:51 encode or try to remember a fact like at
0:53 the height of the Roman Empire Rome was
0:57 importing a third of its food from Egypt
1:00 we can encode or try to remember a
1:03 concept exponential decay involves
1:05 losing the stuff that you have at a
1:08 decreasing rate according to a very
1:11 specific mathematical relationship we
1:14 can encode or try to remember a
1:17 procedure add oil and salt to the
1:21 broccoli mix thoroughly put in the oven at
1:22 at
1:25 450° take it out after 20 minutes the
1:28 question that I am asking in this video
1:30 is how do we encode effectively how how
1:31 do we remember these facts these
1:35 Concepts these procedures in a way that
1:37 we do not forget them very easily
1:39 research covers a lot of different
1:42 encoding strategies but before we get to
1:44 the encoding strategies we have to talk
1:47 about a couple of issues first the first
1:50 issue relates to the nature of research
1:54 in this area a lot of the research on
1:57 encoding involves the riveting task of
2:00 remembering words from word list
2:01 right so you give people an arbitrary
2:04 list of words and you ask them to
2:05 remember as many words as they can and
2:07 then later on you test them and you see
2:09 well how many words do you recognize or
2:11 how many words can you recall or how
2:13 many words do you remember in some way
2:16 shape or form it is absolutely
2:18 mindblowing to me how many different
2:21 ways that you can ask people to do this
2:22 researchers have been doing this for 50
2:24 years and they have not run out of new
2:28 ways of asking people to remember words
2:30 but it's reasonable to ask I think
2:33 whether such a simplistic task like
2:35 remembering words uses the same
2:38 cognitive processes that we would want
2:40 to use in more practical context you
2:42 know when we're learning history or math
2:45 or science or sports or something like
2:47 that a good way of thinking about it I
2:50 think is to compare psychology to
2:52 physics psychologists use word lists for
2:55 the same reason that we might send
2:58 things down ramps to study mass and
3:01 friction and gravity word lists help us
3:04 to Target very specific memory processes
3:06 and often but not necessarily always
3:09 what you see happening with word lists
3:12 applies to more complex materials and in
3:14 more practical contexts as well and
3:16 we're going to see some examples of that
3:18 later on in this video the second
3:19 preliminary issue has to do with the
3:22 nature of encoding so we can split
3:25 encoding processes into two parts as we
3:27 go through our lives we are encoding
3:29 stuff all the time that's just the
3:31 nature of what it means to be alive and
3:34 have some kind of memory we encode
3:36 things we remember things at least some
3:38 things without even trying this is a
3:41 result of our automatic encoding
3:43 processes automatic in the sense that we
3:45 are not necessarily aware that we are
3:47 using any kind of special encoding
3:50 method or processes and that we are not
3:53 necessarily in control of these
3:55 processes but we can also employ
3:57 specific encoding strategies to help us
3:59 remember things more effectively now you
4:01 may have heard of The Memory Palace
4:03 technique also called the method of low
4:05 sign that's one technique but there are
4:07 all the others that we are going to talk
4:10 about in this video momentarily so I
4:11 have these automatic processes and then
4:14 we have these strategic processes that
4:17 we can choose to employ or not now we're
4:20 going to start from the most basic ideas
4:22 in encoding and we're going to build up
4:24 to the more advanced ideas near the end
4:26 of this video and as we add to our
4:28 examples I'm going to keep a list of the
4:32 themes that we're seeing from some of
4:34 these research findings so these are the
4:37 most important principles I would say of
4:39 encoding so by the end we're going to
4:42 have a summary over here of these most
4:44 important principles okay let's look at
4:46 our first encoding strategy so suppose
4:48 you have a list of words that you want
4:51 to remember and you have to pick one of
4:54 the two following strategies for
4:56 remembering these words okay strategy
4:59 one is to count the number of vowels in
5:04 in each word strategy two is to rate how
5:08 much the word relates to the concept of
5:10 economic so you might think of a word
5:14 like poetry eh not very economic you
5:17 might think of a word like demand oh
5:18 that seems pretty economic okay so which
5:21 strategy is going to lead to better
5:24 memories neither strategy is amazing I
5:28 would say but strategy 2 is definitely
5:32 better than strategy g 1 why well the
5:34 traditional explanation is that this
5:36 kind of comparison involves what's
5:40 called depth of processing so there is a
5:43 shallow way of encoding or of processing
5:45 the words while you're encoding
5:48 something and there is a deeper way of
5:50 processing the words or encoding those
5:53 words and the deeper way of processing
5:56 which is like our strategy 2 here
5:59 results in better memories than the shallower
6:00 shallower
6:03 way of processing I hope you notice by
6:04 the way that what I just said involves a
6:07 little bit of circular reasoning so all
6:10 we've done so far is Define bad encoding
6:14 methods as shallow processing and good
6:15 encoding methods or better encoding
6:19 methods as deeper processing but what
6:21 does deep processing and shallow
6:22 processing actually mean for the
6:24 researchers who developed this idea
6:26 shallow processing meant paying
6:29 attention to the form of the information
6:31 that we're trying to remember the form
6:33 of the words that we are trying to
6:35 remember consider the following
6:38 strategies focus on the curves that the
6:41 letters in the word make focus on the
6:44 font and the nature of the font of the
6:48 word focus on what other words rhyme
6:50 with the word that you are learning
6:52 these are all strategies that look to
6:56 the form of the word and not the meaning
6:58 of the word they look to the sound or
7:00 the visual image of the word the
7:04 strategy of rating how well the target
7:07 word relates to the concept of economic
7:09 it asks us to focus on the meaning of
7:12 the word or at least part of the meaning
7:15 this is deep processing now it doesn't
7:18 matter what concept we're using to
7:21 relate the word to we could use a
7:24 strategy like rate how much each word
7:27 relates to the concept of Freedom or
7:29 think about where you would find this
7:32 word word in your home or even just
7:35 think about the meaning of the word
7:38 right all of these instructions get
7:41 people to focus on the meaning and not
7:44 the form of the word and across many
7:47 many different studies encoding based on
7:50 the meaning of the word beats encoding
7:53 based on the form of the word so I'm
7:56 going to add meaning to our list of
7:59 themes here and meaning beats form is an
8:01 important idea that's going to come up
8:03 later in this video let's look at a
8:06 little twist on this meaning beats form
8:09 idea and explore another strategy that
8:11 researchers typically classify as a
8:14 quote unquote good encoding strategy at
8:17 least for remembering words from word
8:19 lists imagine you have this word list
8:20 again and you ask people to remember
8:23 words and for some of the words you ask
8:26 them to repeat the word to themselves
8:29 over and over again this is called wrote
8:32 rehearsal it's typically classified as a
8:35 bad encoding method but for some of the
8:38 other words you tell people to make a
8:41 sentence out of the target word so you
8:42 take the target word you make a sentence
8:45 out of it now on average which of these
8:46 sets of words are going to be more
8:49 memorable well it's the words that you
8:52 have people make a sentence out of note
8:54 how making a sentence out of a word is a
8:59 deeper processing kind of method right
9:00 you have have to actually pay attention
9:01 to the meaning of the word in order to
9:04 make a sentence that makes any sense to
9:07 you if you make a sentence out of
9:09 multiple words simultaneously you're
9:12 also relating those words that you want
9:14 to remember to each other which is
9:16 another idea that's going to come up
9:18 later in this video let's move on to the
9:21 next big idea in encoding generation
9:24 suppose again that you give people two
9:28 equivalent word lists with the following
9:31 exception one list of words presents the
9:34 words like normal looking like this you
9:36 just read the words the other list of
9:39 words substitutes a blank for one of the
9:43 letters in the word now on average which
9:45 of these two lists will be more
9:48 memorable turns out it's the list that
9:51 has words with blanks in them this is
9:53 called the generation effect because we
9:56 are asking people to generate part of
9:58 the thing that they are trying to
10:00 remember researchers have replicated
10:02 this basic effect in a huge variety of
10:05 different ways you can use antonyms to
10:06 generate the words that people are
10:08 trying to remember you can use Rhymes to
10:10 generate the words that people are
10:11 trying to remember you can have people
10:13 generate numbers in mathematical
10:14 equations and they'll remember the
10:16 generated numbers better than the
10:19 presented numbers you can embed words
10:21 with blanks in them in sentences and
10:23 people will remember the content of
10:25 those sentences more effectively now the
10:28 generation effect is an example of what
10:30 we were talking about earlier with these
10:33 automatic encoding processes no one is
10:36 explicitly using any kind of encoding
10:38 strategy it's just that we're asking
10:41 people to perform a slightly different
10:45 kind of task there's something about us
10:47 having to generate the thing that that
10:49 we're trying to remember that makes it
10:51 more memorable so what is the theme here
10:53 now we could call it generation I am
10:56 going to call it cognitive effort
10:58 because I think that also applies to
11:00 some of the other strategies that we're
11:02 going to be looking at something about
11:05 the extra cognitive work that we do when
11:07 we generate the word makes it more
11:10 memorable here's another example of this
11:13 theme suppose you give people two kinds
11:15 of sentences to remember you give people
11:17 normal sentences like the one you see
11:20 here and you give people scrambled
11:23 sentences where they have to rearrange
11:26 the words to figure out the sentence
11:28 that they are supposed to remember which
11:30 sentences are people going to remember
11:32 better well it's The Scrambled sentences
11:33 on average this is a little bit
11:35 different than the generation we looked
11:38 at earlier in a sense we aren't
11:40 generating anything right the the words
11:43 are already there and there's no blanks
11:45 in them we don't have to come up with
11:48 new words but in a more fundamental way
11:50 we are generating something because we
11:53 are generating the sentence that we are
11:55 supposed to remember right The Scrambled
11:58 sentence is not a sentence at all and
11:59 that's not the thing that we're we're
12:01 supposed to remember and by rearranging
12:04 the words of a sentence we also have to
12:06 pay at least some attention to the
12:08 meaning of those words and the meaning
12:10 of the sentence as a whole so this
12:13 rearranging a sentence task touches on a
12:16 couple of our existing encoding themes
12:17 now so far we've been talking about
12:21 generation as an automatic encoding
12:24 process what about creating an encoding
12:26 strategy is there some way for us to use
12:29 generation strategically to remember
12:32 more let's ask this question suppose you
12:35 are reading a story which do you think
12:37 you're going to have a better memory for
12:39 the facts that are directly stated in
12:43 the story or the inferences that you
12:46 made while you were reading the story so
12:48 these might be things that were
12:51 indirectly implied or things that maybe
12:53 you came up with as you were reading the
12:56 story this is just the generation idea
12:59 again in a more practical setting and
13:02 you can imagine creating a reading
13:05 strategy that takes advantage of this
13:08 idea by asking readers or asking
13:10 yourself if you're the reader to
13:14 generate more inferences as you read and
13:16 generating inferences when you're
13:19 reading is usually a major part of what
13:22 we might call active reading which is
13:24 more kind of deeper more effective way
13:26 of reading things okay so the generation
13:30 effect is about generating the thing
13:32 that we are trying to remember what
13:34 about taking the thing we're trying to
13:37 remember and going Beyond it generating
13:39 something more than what we are trying
13:42 to remember okay suppose we gave people
13:44 two word lists again and one of these
13:49 word lists has more concrete words like
13:54 tree window and banana but the other
13:57 word list has more abstract words like
14:02 freedom debt or synthesis which of these
14:04 kinds of words do you think is more
14:06 memorable well you might not be
14:09 surprised that it's the concrete words
14:12 that people tend to remember better now
14:16 the reason relates to our next big idea
14:20 in encoding which is imagery concrete
14:24 words are easier to imagine and so the
14:26 idea is that when people read concrete
14:29 words they naturally tend to imagine
14:32 them more often than when they read
14:35 abstract words again this is an encoding
14:37 effect that happens probably beneath our
14:39 level of awareness so this is kind of an
14:41 automatic process that's going on it's
14:43 just easier to imagine these concrete
14:45 words we're not telling anyone to use
14:47 any particular strategy here what
14:50 happens when we tell people to imagine
14:51 the things that they are trying to
14:55 remember well as you might imagine it
14:57 helps a lot imagery is an
14:59 extraordinarily powerful technique not
15:01 just because it helps us to remember
15:04 things but because it also applies to a
15:07 wide variety of situations it helps with
15:09 our memory for facts so students who
15:12 engage in imagery when they read a story
15:14 end up remembering more from that story
15:17 than students who do not engage in
15:19 imagery it helps with our memory for
15:22 procedures so having students imagine
15:25 shooting a basketball improves their
15:28 memory for the movements that make up
15:30 that shot it helps our memory for
15:34 Concepts having students imagine how our
15:38 lungs take in oxygen and release carbon
15:40 dioxide while they're reading a
15:42 scientific text describing what is
15:45 happening improves their memory and
15:48 understanding for that concept now
15:51 compare that to one of our earlier
15:54 techniques the make a sentence out of it
15:55 technique now that make a sentence out
15:57 of it technique is really only
15:59 applicable when you're dealing with word
16:01 lists and I don't know how to make a
16:04 sentence out of how the lungs work like
16:06 what am I making a sentence out of now
16:08 when I say the word imagery you might
16:10 think of creating a visualization in
16:14 your mind but that's not the boundary of
16:17 what we mean by imagery you can imagine
16:20 sounds you can imagine smells you can
16:23 imagine the feel of something any
16:27 Sensation that we have we can in
16:30 principle imagine and that would help
16:32 our memory for what we're trying to
16:34 remember when we imagine something it's
16:36 like our brain is going through a
16:38 simulation of the real thing so when you
16:42 imagine taking a free throw you activate
16:44 a lot of the parts of your brain that
16:45 you would be activating when you're
16:48 actually taking a free throw furthermore
16:50 there's a fair amount of research that
16:53 shows that people can be taught to use
16:56 imagery to improve their encoding for
16:58 material lots of research studies that
17:01 train kids and athletes to use imagery
17:03 see improved learning outcomes and
17:05 there's lots of ongoing research right
17:09 now on what kinds of imagery is most
17:12 helpful for which kinds of tasks you can
17:14 see how imagery involves cognitive
17:17 effort and it also usually involves
17:19 paying attention to the meaning of what
17:22 we are trying to remember but imagery is
17:25 so fundamental and important I'm going
17:28 to put it in its own category here as as
17:30 a theme a couple of pneumonic techniques
17:32 take imagery to the next level you may
17:34 have heard of The Memory Palace
17:37 technique where people mentally Place
17:41 images into some location that they know
17:43 really well so it could be a
17:45 neighborhood or a house or a park for
17:47 the sake of consistency let's say we are
17:51 working with a word list again so you
17:54 imagine walking through this place in a
17:57 certain path and you place images of the
17:59 words you want to remember along this
18:02 path and then when you want to remember
18:04 this list of words again all you do is
18:08 walk back through the path and as you
18:10 walk back you want to call to mind the
18:12 images that you placed in the path in
18:14 the first place clearly this involves a
18:16 lot of imagery one of our encoding
18:18 themes but there's something else
18:21 important going on here too something
18:24 about arranging things in space makes
18:26 things memorable but you also need a
18:27 palace that is you need a place where
18:29 you're going to put all the stuff that
18:31 you're trying to remember inside another
18:33 encoding strategy might help us flesh
18:37 out what is unique and special about the
18:41 Memory Palace technique so suppose
18:44 instead of arranging things in space we
18:47 arranged things in time we'll call this
18:49 the time Palace technique even though I
18:51 think that label is kind of using the
18:54 wrong adjective and the noun because the
18:57 palace is the space and anyhow imagine
18:59 your life from the early EST moments
19:02 that you can remember until now just
19:04 like with the Memory Palace now you have
19:06 a timeline where you can put images of
19:08 the things you want to remember all
19:12 along that timeline or you could imagine
19:15 the steps that it takes to make a really
19:18 great sandwich and you could put items
19:21 at each step in that process now there
19:24 isn't as much research on this time
19:26 style of Memory Palace but from what
19:30 I've read this is just as effective as a
19:33 traditional Memory Palace something
19:36 about sequences in time is particularly
19:38 memorable for us what's common in both
19:40 of these techniques is that we are using
19:42 an existing framework to help us
19:45 remember something new either it's a
19:47 place we know well or it's a sequence of
19:50 events that we know very well in other
19:52 words we are taking something that we
19:55 already understand fairly deeply and
19:57 using that to help us remember something
20:02 new so let's add Frameworks to this list
20:05 of encoding themes now the imagery and
20:07 the Memory Palace techniques those are
20:09 about things that are going on in our
20:11 head right things that we're imagining
20:13 what happens when we actually do
20:16 something physical to help us remember
20:19 something now we could imagine a picture
20:22 or we could actually draw one let's go
20:25 back to our trusty word lists and
20:27 compare these two conditions suppose
20:29 that in one condition for every word
20:32 that people saw they had 30 seconds to
20:34 write the word that they were trying to
20:37 remember but in the other condition
20:40 people had 30 seconds to draw the word
20:43 that they were trying to remember which
20:45 set of words will be more memorable here
20:47 well as you might imagine it's the
20:49 drawing condition we're in the section
20:51 of the video where we're talking about
20:54 how amazing drawing is for encoding okay
20:56 but but what if we pit imagery against
20:58 drawing what if we ask one group of
21:00 people to imagine the words that they're
21:02 trying to remember and we ask another
21:04 group of people to draw those words
21:07 instead well now what which set of words
21:10 are are going to be more memorable well
21:12 drawing still wins what if we don't give
21:14 people enough time to draw I mean 30
21:16 seconds that's a really long time to try
21:17 to remember just one word what if they
21:20 only have four seconds to remember the
21:22 word so you either have four seconds to
21:23 write the word down or you have 4
21:27 seconds to draw the word before you see
21:30 another word drawing still wins
21:32 dramatically in a series of experiments
21:34 two researchers tried all of these
21:37 comparisons out plus a lot more and
21:40 drawing just kept coming out on top
21:41 what's the mechanism behind the drawing
21:44 effect why is this working well to
21:46 explain why or at least partly explain
21:50 why we have to talk about memory traces
21:53 as we encode information we potentially
21:57 create different kinds of memory traces
22:00 in our mind and I think you'll
22:01 understand what I mean by this term
22:03 memory Trace if we just look at some
22:06 examples if you just hear a word that
22:09 you are trying to remember we might say
22:12 that you have recorded a sound trace in
22:15 your mind but say you hear that word and
22:18 you imagine what that word looks like
22:20 well now we've created two kinds of
22:22 memory traces we've created the sound
22:24 trace and we've created what we might
22:26 call the picture Trace right it's a
22:28 picture in our mind that we created and
22:32 if you move your body by say drawing a
22:35 picture of an object well that creates
22:37 another kind of memory Trace that
22:40 creates a movement Trace in your mind
22:43 let's not stop at drawing I'm not any
22:44 good at drawing I'm much better at
22:47 acting things out what happens if we act
22:49 things out well something very similar
22:51 to the imagery and the drawing examples
22:54 happens acting out phrases like throw
22:56 the ball or eat the cookie makes these
22:59 phrases much more memor able than simply
23:02 reading or writing these phrases out
23:05 when you're drawing the movement Trace
23:07 is very small and subtle but when you
23:09 are acting something out the movement
23:12 Trace is very big and important in our
23:14 minds so we have another principle to
23:16 incorporate into our themes and so I'm
23:18 going to change the imagery theme and
23:21 make it say something like create a
23:24 variety of memory traces we're going to
23:27 say more about that later but that seems
23:29 to be what's happening with imagery a
23:31 little bit that seems to be what's
23:33 happening with drawing that seems to be
23:35 what's happening with acting things out
23:38 okay let's move on to another idea now
23:41 many aspects of encoding seem to work
23:45 because they make some information more
23:48 distinctive than other information now
23:50 say I gave you another word list again
23:53 but I highlight and bold three words in
23:56 the word list well those words now
24:00 appear to be more distinctive and on
24:03 average those words are going to be more
24:06 memorable than the other words in the
24:09 list suppose I give you a word list with
24:12 both high frequency words that is words
24:15 that we see and use very very often and
24:17 low frequency words that is words that
24:20 you know but words that we don't see
24:22 that often or that we don't hear that
24:25 often it's the low frequency words that
24:28 tend to appear more distinct
24:30 because the high frequency words are
24:34 kind of the background words of our life
24:35 and the low frequency words come up
24:38 rarely so they seem more distinctive and
24:40 people tend to remember them better all
24:42 else being equal distinctiveness could
24:45 also potentially explain some of the
24:47 earlier findings that we talked about so
24:49 if we go back to this idea of shallow
24:51 processing and deep processing we can
24:54 ask this question again of why does deep
24:56 processing work imagine using our
24:59 shallow processing strategy so we're
25:02 counting the vowels in each word that
25:03 means that a lot of the words are going
25:05 to have three vowels or two vowels or
25:07 maybe four vowels it doesn't make the
25:10 words terribly distinctive but the
25:13 deeper processing technique raing a word
25:17 on how economic it is is probably
25:20 likelier to make the words seem more
25:22 distinctive so the difference between
25:25 three and four doesn't seem like that
25:27 much but the difference between poetry
25:31 and demand and seems rather large at
25:33 least that's one argument that you could
25:35 make that people have made consider a
25:37 slightly different case so suppose you
25:40 have your word list again only this time
25:43 you are going to say five of the words
25:46 out loud on this word list and the rest
25:49 of the words you are going to read
25:51 silently which words do you think are
25:53 going to be more memorable right you
25:54 might have guessed that on average
25:55 you'll have a better memory for the
25:58 words that you said out loud
26:01 how should we explain this result now
26:04 you might think oh maybe it's cognitive
26:06 effort because it seems like we're doing
26:09 something extra like in the generation
26:11 or in the imagery kind of scenario so
26:13 maybe it's the fact that we're doing
26:15 something extra we're saying these words
26:17 out loud that's helping us to remember
26:19 them sometimes this is called the
26:21 production effect another argument you
26:23 might make is that it's related to
26:26 having a variety of memory traces right
26:28 for the words that you read silently
26:30 maybe you were only paying attention to
26:32 the letters and for the words that you
26:34 said aloud you get to hear the sound of
26:36 the word actually you're probably
26:38 hearing hearing the sound of the word in
26:40 your mind when you're reading so that's
26:42 probably not that strong of an argument
26:44 but to help us figure out what's going
26:46 on we can compare the case that we just
26:48 talked about where we read five words
26:50 aloud with some other cases so what
26:53 happens if you compare that case to the
26:56 case where you read all the words aloud
26:58 and the case where you don't read any of
27:01 the words aloud if reading the words
27:04 aloud is having an important effect then
27:06 when you read all the words aloud you
27:08 should have a better memory for the list
27:11 than when you just read them silently
27:13 but it turns out that that doesn't
27:16 happen this is actually another variety
27:19 of distinctiveness again reading those
27:22 five words aloud made the words more
27:25 distinct in your mind you did something
27:27 different with them but when you read
27:29 all the words alow
27:31 it's all background again none of the
27:34 words are distinct anymore and you can
27:37 see some limits of this idea of
27:39 cognitive effort right saying the words
27:42 out loud involves extra effort but
27:44 apparently it's not the kind of effort
27:46 that actually helps you to remember
27:52 effectively still with me there's one
27:55 aspect to encoding that doesn't really
27:57 fit into the themes that we've talked
28:00 about so far it's not about meaning or
28:02 cognitive effort or imagery doesn't
28:04 involve Frameworks like with the Memory
28:06 Palace technique let me explain it by
28:09 describing a research study again on
28:12 word lists suppose you gave people
28:15 points for every word that they
28:17 remembered when you went to test them
28:19 later on and suppose that people cared
28:21 in some way about getting points maybe
28:23 you rewarded them financially or maybe
28:25 they got to do something fun and then
28:27 also suppose that different words have
28:30 different point Point values associated
28:31 with them so some words are worth a lot
28:33 some words are not worth much at all
28:35 what happens when you ask people to
28:37 remember a word list like this where you
28:38 don't give them any kind of explicit
28:41 encoding strategy you just have some
28:43 words that are worth more in terms of
28:46 points than other words well you might
28:50 not be shocked to hear that the high
28:53 value words are remembered better than
28:55 the low value words so people want to
28:57 rack up those points so they try to
29:00 remember those high value words now the
29:02 interesting part is why we have to
29:04 return again to the distinction between
29:07 automatic encoding processes and
29:11 deliberate or strategic encoding
29:13 processes so one explanation is that
29:17 people use better encoding methods on
29:20 the high value words so when you come
29:23 across a high value word you might use
29:25 imagery or you might create a sentence
29:27 out of it or you might do something that
29:30 is generally considered to be a better
29:32 encoding strategy and when you come
29:34 across the low value words you don't
29:35 really do anything special you just kind
29:38 of read it and skip it now there's some
29:40 evidence for this explanation because
29:41 when you tell people to use better
29:44 encoding methods on the list as a whole
29:46 so you instruct people to use imagery or
29:49 to make sentences out of the words then
29:53 the value effect the the effect of those
29:57 high value words tends to go away people
30:00 remember both kinds of words about
30:02 equally and that suggests that people at
30:04 the Baseline just aren't exerting the
30:07 effort that they otherwise could exert
30:10 to remember these low value words
30:12 another explanation is that high value
30:15 words trigger a biochemical reward in
30:18 the brain kind of automatically and that
30:20 reward system helps people to encode the
30:22 word more effectively there's some
30:24 evidence that this is going on too so
30:26 researchers they presented these words
30:28 to people and they might present a high
30:30 value word and then immediately after
30:32 people see the high Val value word
30:34 before they can imagine it or before
30:37 they can make it into a sentence they
30:39 tell the people to forget the high value
30:42 word so people see the high value word
30:46 but they don't have time to use a more
30:49 strategic or highlevel encoding method
30:51 so the researchers are using this
30:53 technique to try to block people from
30:55 using a higher value encoding method
30:57 what happens is that they actually test
30:59 people on the words that they told them
31:02 earlier to forget and you see that
31:05 people still tend to remember the high
31:08 value words a little bit better than the
31:10 low value words so all of this suggests
31:13 that there is this motivation angle
31:17 coming into encoding as well at least
31:20 through this one reward pathway but I'm
31:23 imagining it's more complex than that by
31:25 now we have talked about a lot of
31:27 encoding strategies but there are still
31:31 still a couple of aspects to encoding
31:32 that become particularly important when
31:36 we move away from trying to memorize
31:40 word lists and toward learning actual
31:44 complex procedures or complex Concepts
31:46 when we are trying to remember and
31:49 understand a concept deeply or when we
31:52 are trying to understand a procedure and
31:54 use that procedure effectively in the
31:57 future we have to bring together a lot
31:59 of little bits about the thing that
32:01 we're trying to remember and integrate
32:05 them into a coherent whole let's say
32:07 you're learning a new problem solving
32:09 technique in math and I'm going to make
32:12 this relatively simple for us here but
32:14 you come across a worked example like
32:16 this one what's our ideal encoding
32:19 strategy here are we going to create a
32:23 Memory Palace are we going to draw
32:25 something out are we going to act
32:28 something out well to me none of these
32:32 seem quite appropriate for the task at
32:35 hand a very powerful way of encoding
32:38 material like this is to use what's called
32:39 called
32:41 self-explanations this is when we ask
32:44 ourselves questions about what we're
32:45 trying to learn and we answer those
32:47 questions or try to answer those
32:49 questions in this case we would ask
32:52 questions like why did they do this here
32:55 at this moment in time and not that in
32:58 that moment of time what does step three
33:01 help us to accomplish or what are the
33:04 cues in the problem itself or in the
33:08 question that would lead us to use this
33:11 particular strategy or how does this
33:14 step help us to get closer to our goal
33:17 or maybe even what is our goal in the
33:19 first place again we're seeing themes of
33:21 meaning come up because a lot of these
33:25 questions are about the meaning of
33:28 particular steps or the implication of
33:30 something in the question so you're
33:33 seeing that a deeper processing approach
33:36 is likelier to be more beneficial than
33:39 say a superficial processing approach
33:41 where we just memorize the sequence of
33:44 the steps right in this case creating a
33:46 self-explanation is what is going to
33:49 help a student bring the various parts
33:52 of this thing together it's about
33:54 matching the aspects of the problem with
33:56 the steps themselves and matching each
33:59 step to other steps so that when you
34:02 walk away from this you have a more
34:04 coherent idea you can think of the
34:06 procedure as a whole or even the kind of
34:09 problem matched with the strategy as a
34:12 whole now you you also see themes of
34:14 integration in some of the techniques
34:15 that we already talked about so I
34:18 mentioned this earlier with the make a
34:20 sentence out of it method for
34:23 remembering words from word lists if you
34:25 use multiple words in a single sentence
34:28 you're integrating these words together
34:31 structurally semantically by meaning but
34:33 integration is even more important when
34:36 we think about the effect of drawing on
34:38 encoding earlier we talked about the
34:41 drawing effect as being fundamentally
34:44 about creating a variety of memory
34:47 traces but it's not just about creating
34:49 a variety of memory traces it's that
34:52 they all are integrated together so the
34:54 movement of someone's hands while
34:58 they're drawing is creating the image
35:01 that they imagined before they drew it
35:04 or or maybe that they imagined as they
35:06 were drawing it and of course what they
35:09 are seeing with their eyes is something
35:12 maybe close to what they imagine and all
35:15 that has to do with the meaning of the
35:16 word that they are trying to remember
35:19 and so it's not just the variety of
35:21 memory traces it's really that all of
35:22 these are integrated together into a
35:26 coherent whole which improves our memory
35:29 for this thing it's it's not just about
35:32 integrating the bits of the thing that
35:34 we're trying to remember with themselves
35:37 it's also about integrating our prior
35:39 knowledge what we already know what we
35:42 already have with the new thing that we
35:44 are trying to encode or the new thing
35:46 that we are trying to learn many
35:49 research experiments give students the
35:51 exact same learning experiences but they
35:53 just sequence these experiences in a
35:55 different way one group of students
35:57 might play a video game that is meant to
36:00 introduce students to the idea of
36:01 different kinds of statistical
36:03 distributions and then those students
36:05 will read a passage on different kinds
36:07 of statistical distributions and their
36:10 properties but the other group will read
36:13 the passage first and then they'll play
36:15 the video game it turns out that these
36:17 groups are not necessarily equivalent in
36:20 terms of what they learned from the
36:22 passage and the video game in several
36:25 cases the students who play the video
36:29 game first and then read the passage get
36:32 more out of the passage than someone who
36:35 just reads the passage and then plays
36:38 the video game what presumably happens
36:40 in these studies is that the experience
36:43 of playing the video game enables the
36:45 students to more deeply encode the
36:48 material in the reading passage but the
36:50 reverse isn't true the reading passage
36:53 doesn't help students get more out of
36:55 the video game in part because there's
36:58 more informational content in in the
37:00 reading passage again you see this
37:02 distinction between deep processing and
37:05 shallow processing but in this case the
37:08 reason has to do with what students
37:11 experienced beforehand or what what
37:13 prior knowledge they enter into the
37:17 learning experience with
37:20 okay we're almost there this is the last
37:21 big idea that we're going to go over
37:25 right now I've spent all this time in
37:26 this video talking about effective
37:30 encoding strategies but I haven't talked
37:34 about what happens when we remember what
37:37 we had encoded in the first place right
37:39 this is a really significant oversight
37:42 I've essentially been talking about half
37:44 of the remembering process maybe even
37:46 less than half honestly what happens
37:48 when I ask you to remember all those
37:51 words from all the word lists that we
37:53 saw again when we try to remember
37:55 something that we had encoded before we
38:00 have to search our mind for that memory
38:02 again it's a little bit like walking in
38:03 the woods to find something that you're
38:05 looking for one way of thinking about
38:08 encoding is that good encoding
38:11 techniques make the search path make
38:14 that walk through the woods a lot easier
38:16 so good encoding methods are kind of
38:18 like the blazes on the trails or the
38:21 signposts that tell you which way to go
38:23 to find the information that you're
38:24 looking for you can see this especially
38:26 with the Memory Palace technique so we
38:28 put all these images along in this
38:30 little path and then to get those images
38:32 back again we have to walk mentally
38:35 through that path again retrieving those
38:37 memories is easy when we walk through
38:40 that path but if we walk some other path
38:42 or if we try to access those memories in
38:45 some other way the Memory Palace is not
38:48 as helpful to us the whole premise of
38:49 this video is that there are good
38:51 encoding methods and that there are bad
38:55 encoding methods but in a way it doesn't
38:58 quite make sense to speak that way
39:01 unless you've defined how you are going
39:04 to remember this memory in the future
39:05 I'm pretty sure I am not being very
39:07 clear so let's go back to one of our
39:11 earlier examples meaning beats form deep
39:13 processing is superior to shallow
39:16 processing this doesn't always hold true
39:19 you can create situations where shallow
39:22 processing beats deep processing okay
39:24 let's go back to the task of remembering
39:26 words but it's going to be a little bit
39:28 more complicated now we're still going
39:30 to ask people to remember specific words
39:33 but we're going to encourage them to
39:36 encode these words in a specific way for
39:39 one set of words we include the word in
39:40 a sentence so it's going to work like
39:42 this we're going to give them the
39:45 sentence that says the blank has a
39:47 silver engine and then we're going to
39:50 tell them the word is train so we want
39:53 them to remember train we've embedded it
39:55 in a sentence for the other set of words
39:59 we are going to encourage rhyme encoding
40:02 so a shallower form of encoding so we're
40:05 going to say something like this word
40:10 rhymes with legal the word is Eagle so
40:12 we want them to remember eagle and we've
40:13 given them this extra information that
40:15 it rhymes with legal so in one set of
40:18 words we have this deeper meaning based
40:19 encoding and in the other set of words
40:23 we have a shallower rhyme based encoding
40:25 method now you should be able to predict
40:27 exactly what happens here after all the
40:28 these word lists that we've talked about
40:31 if we give people a standard recognition
40:33 test so where we just just display the
40:35 word and we ask like was this on the
40:38 word list or not people remember the
40:42 meaning based set of words better those
40:44 words that were embedded in a sentence
40:45 what if you give them a different kind
40:47 of test what if you give them a test
40:52 that says this word rhymes with
40:56 Regal what was the word this word rhymes
40:59 with pain what was the word under this
41:03 kind of test which set of words are more
41:06 memorable well it's the words that were
41:09 encoded in the way that we're asking
41:12 people to retrieve them it's the words
41:15 that were encoded through rhyme that are
41:18 easier to retrieve to remember through
41:21 rhyme again an encoding method does
41:24 better when there is a match between the
41:26 encoding that we're asking people to do
41:29 and the kind of remembering that we're
41:31 asking people to do the technical word
41:33 for this is transfer appropriate
41:35 processing all it means is that all El
41:37 being equal the encoding method that
41:40 best matches the remembering situation
41:43 is the one that will be more effective
41:45 you might think back on how this idea
41:46 applies to some of the situations that
41:48 we already looked at think about the
41:51 drawing and enacting effects right we
41:53 talked about how they're multiple memory
41:55 traces we talked about how these memory
41:59 traces integrate with each other but
42:01 another important aspect of this is that you've
42:02 you've
42:06 expanded the number of applicable
42:08 remembering situation of matching
42:11 remembering situations so say you
42:13 encoded through drawing you might be
42:16 tested on the meaning of the word well
42:17 you drew an image that is the meaning of
42:20 the word so that that's an appropriate
42:22 situation you might be tested on an
42:24 image of the word well that's an
42:26 appropriate situation you might be
42:29 tested on say uh remembering it through
42:31 the movement of your hand well that's an
42:33 appropriate situation and so encoding
42:36 methods that expand the number of
42:38 appropriate situations seem to be
42:41 particularly effective why does
42:43 explaining the steps of this worked
42:46 example helps students more than just
42:50 memorizing the order of the steps well
42:53 again you might appeal to this idea that
42:56 explaining those steps makes the
42:58 encoding more broadly applicable to
43:01 other situations if you're looking for
43:04 cues in the problem as to when you might
43:06 apply this procedure well that's going
43:08 to help you in the next problem if you
43:11 see those cues you should apply this
43:12 procedure the argument here is that
43:14 encoding methods aren't necessarily
43:17 inherently good or bad in and of
43:19 themselves rather they expand the range
43:22 of possible matching situations so
43:24 encoding with a rhyme is only going to
43:26 help you if you're going to try to
43:29 remember that thing through rhyme again
43:30 it's very narrow but encoding through
43:32 meaning is going to help you in a wider
43:34 variety of situations so here is our
43:38 complete list of themes for encoding
43:40 some of them work in conjunction with
43:42 one another some of them are
43:45 explanations for others but I think all
43:47 of them are interesting in their own
43:49 right if you're still here and you like
43:51 this kind of content um launching a
43:54 membership site with more content like
43:56 this been working hard on it it should
43:59 be a ailable in the near future if
44:00 you're interested in learning more about
44:02 that there will be a link in a pinned comment
44:04 comment
44:06 below thanks for watching I'll see you
