Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success : A Self-management Approach

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UNDERSTANDING LEARNING AND MEMORY 31

identified in cases of child abuse where psychotherapists have elicited

memories of traumatic events that never occurred.

A sixth flaw is called bias. It involves the editing or changing of

previous experiences based on what we now feel rather than what

happened in the past. Schacter (2001) pointed out that we think of

memories as snapshots from family albums that are retrieved in the

exact way they were stored. Unfortunately, our memories do not work

in the same manner as a photo, because we recreate or reconstruct

our experiences rather than retrieve exact copies of them. Sometimes,

in the process of reconstructing memories, we add feelings, beliefs, or

even new information we obtained after the experience. Barbara

Streisand’s song “The Way We Were” illustrates bias as it relates to

recollections of close personal relationships. Do the lyrics remind you

of any personal experiences where you might view the situation or

relationship differently now than you did in the past?

Memories

May be beautiful, and yet

What’s too painful to remember

We simply choose to forget;

For it’s the laughter

We will remember

Whenever we remember

The way we were.

The last flaw in our memory is persistence. It refers to remember-

ing what we would prefer to omit from our memory. Have you ever

had problems sleeping because you can’t stop thinking about a poor

grade on an examination or bad interview you had? I bet you can still

remember a certain negative experience in your life and how you

recalled the experience repeatedly in the days and weeks after it

occurred, even though you would have liked to forget it.

Can you think of situations where you experience one or more of

these memory flaws? If so, share them with your classmates when you

discuss this chapter in class or with your study group. Let us now

turn to the major focus of this chapter, the memory problem of

transience.

HOW DOES THE INFORMATION-PROCESSING SYSTEM EXPLAIN LEARNING?

Have you ever wondered why you remember certain information

and why you cannot even remember the important ideas in a course

you completed a few months or weeks ago? Many learning experts

believe how individuals learn provides the answer to this question.