Chapter 2, page 61
Attention is when you attend to information and focus your awareness on it. Recent evidence suggests
that information that is not attended to does not enter working memory.
Rehearsal
Rehearsal is the process that keeps information cycling within working memory. For example, you
say something over and over to yourself to keep it in short-term memory. If you stop rehearsing the
information, it will drop out of short-term memory.
Long-term memory
Long-term memory is the memory store where information is stored for very long periods of time.
There are several different kinds of knowledge in long-term memory: declarative, procedural,
metacognitive, and episodic.
One proposal for how long-term memory is stored is that it is organized in semantic networks of nodes
and links between the nodes. Spreading activation can lead nodes to become activated.
Encoding
Information is moved from STM to LTM by encoding the information.
There are three groups of encoding strategies: selection, organization, and integration.
Encoding is most effective when it is active and meaningful. Students learn more when they actively
carry out encoding themselves, instead of having a teacher do it for them.
Retrieval
After the information is encoded, it can be retrieved by moving information from LTM to working
memory.
Retrieval framework can facilitate remembering, as do multiple retrieval paths.
Forgetting
People forget some of what they learn, and they tend to forget most rapidly soon after the learning
period is over.
People also forget less than they often think they do.
Several factors mediate how slowly or rapidly forgetting proceeds: initial learning, occasional use of
ideas, and spaced study.
There are two main theories of why forgetting occurs: the fading theory and the interference theory.
There is evidence at least for the interference theory.
[TRY TO HAVE ONE BULLET PER B-HEAD.]
Constructivism
According to the theory of constructivism, people learn by actively building up ideas on their own
There are many different versions of constructivism. Constructivism can be divided into two broad
camps (cognitive constructivism and social constructivism) based on how much they emphasize the role of
social interaction in learning.
Eight principles of constructivist are related to the learner, to learning environments, and to the role of
others.
Learners
The first three constructivist principles focus on the learning processes of learners.
Learners actively construct their own understandings of the world.
Knowledge construction is driven forward by problems and challenges.
Students learn most when engaged in inquiry.