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