Inclass Exercise #3
Attention, Perception and Encoding
Jan. 30, 2001
Part I
Examples of text book strategies that are related to the following components of the cognitive paradigm:
Attention bold print, italics, any special font, pictures
Organization outlines, objectives at the beginning, chapter structures
Elaboration sidebars about details, examples, case studies
Imagery charts and graphs, pictures, vivid explanations
Chunking chapter structured in main topics, lists
Part II
The following teaching/learning strategies are based on the ideas behind attention, perception and encoding. What principle of the cognitive model is probably responsible for the situation described in each of the following items?
Encoding Attention Perception
1. In order to remember the food pyramid, I have created a very funny drawing of the pyramid made out of the different foods represented by each level. I close my eyes and can picture it whenever I need to remember the foods.
encoding - because the stimulus (the pyramid) has been changed to facilitate storage and retrieval.
2. When I am confronted with a new idea I don't understand, I search my memory for other ideas that are like it and label it with the term that seems the closest at the time.
perception - because I am trying to recognize or put a name to the new information
3. I use colored pens to highlight important points.
attention - because the colors will cause me to focus on the important points
4. I use different colored pens to indicate different categories of content in what I'm learning.
encoding - because I am transforming the straight presentation of material into categories
and the different colors signify different categories of information for storage
5. I seem to remember the jokes that the teacher tells in class better than the content.
attention - because the jokes are novel and draw attention to themselves
long term memory - could also be this because of episodic storage of jokes
6. It's easier for me to keep up with a lecture when it's on stuff I know already because I can recognize things faster than learning new ones.
perception - because I am recognizing the information as something I know
7. In order to remember the lecture material better, I reorganize my lecture notes into main idea categories.
encoding - because I transform the notes into a more organized fashion
8. If I have to remember a list or something, it helps if I make up a little nonsense rhyme using the first letters of all the items.
encoding - because I am
creating a new set of cues to use in storage and retrieval