developmental delays (discussion)
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07CH_Willis_Neuroscience.pdf
7 Long-Term Memory
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
• Understand the process of long-term memory consolidation.
• Describe how long-term potentiation occurs.
• Explain why multisensory teaching improves memory consolidation.
• Appraise the role of interference in long-term memory formation and explain the theories of primacy effect and recency effect.
• Discuss how rote memorization is important to long-term memory formation.
• Evaluate strategies that can help increase long-term memory in learning contexts.
• Explain why concept memory and transfer are important to success beyond the classroom.
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Section 7.2 Key Concepts About Long-Term Memory
Imagine yourself walking through a wooded area the morning after a heavy snowstorm. Even though a number of trails exist beneath the snow, you are essentially forging a new trail as you proceed where no one has yet walked through the snow. If you need to make this same journey several times during the day, you find that it takes you less time to cross the woods each time you do so. The path through the snow that you are creating becomes deeper, firmer, and faster each time you use it. Simply by using your own path repeatedly, it has become a more efficient and more durable transportation facilitator.
Construction of long-term memory is essentially the same process as the development of that efficient pathway through the snow. Just as repeated use carves out a more efficient trail, repeated activation of a new memory circuit results in the neuroplastic process that makes it more efficient, faster, and more durable.
7.1 Rewind—Fast Forward As you learned in Chapter 6, the brain constantly changes through neuroplasticity, with the development of synapses, dendrites, and myelin layering of axons in response to activation. Increased activation of a particular neural circuit strengthens that neural circuit through the neuroplasticity process. Our long-term memory storage is promoted in much the same way. This chapter will take your understanding of neuroplasticity and guide you to strategies that construct durable, long-term memories.
7.2 Key Concepts About Long-Term Memory Long-term memories are formed when information encoded in short-term memory in the hippocampus reaches the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and undergoes further activation. In the PFC, if these memories are activated and used in a variety of meaningful ways, neuroplasticity strengthens and increases their connections as they are retained in long-term memory. This is the process of using our working memory (described in Chapter 5) to work on informa- tion and then consolidate it into long-term memory. Recall from Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) model that the central executive part of working memory roughly corresponds to neural net- works in the prefrontal cortex (Nee et al., 2013).
The prefrontal cortex appears to be related to helping us orient to, attend to, construct memo- ries about, and work on relevant information in our environment and regulate our conscious emotional states. However, for that information to be stored over the long term, synaptic changes in other brain areas also need to occur. In Chapter 6 you were introduced to the process of long-term sensitization (LTS). Recall that LTS involves the strengthening of neural connections after the neurons have become sensitized to a stimulus. For example, if an ani- mal is continually shocked, the shock leads to an increased response from the neurons and a change in synaptic connections. This type of learning is associated with the storage of implicit long-term memories.
An implicit memory is a memory for how to do something and represents one of two major divisions of long-term memory. Implicit memories are considered unconscious and are
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Section 7.2 Key Concepts About Long-Term Memory
sometimes referred to as nondeclarative memories. An example might be your memory of how to ride a bike or drive a car. These are tasks that you can perform without having to con- sciously recall the steps. Instead, you just know how to do them. In contrast, we also have an explicit memory system. Explicit memories are conscious memories for facts, knowledge, and personal experiences or declarative knowledge. Explicit memories are consolidated in the process of long-term potentiation (LTP).
Like LTS, LTP involves the increased firing of neural connections. However, LTP uses a different chemical process and, in connection with the consolidation of explicit memories, occurs in the hippocampus (Kandel, Schwartz, & Jessell, 2000). Additionally, LTP is likely to last longer and cause permanent changes in behavior. An important aspect of LTP is that the increased fir- ing of the neurons and the strengthening of the neural connections can occur without continued brain stimu- lation. For example, as you read this text your brain is creating new neural connections to store the material. When you stop reading the material, your brain will continue to strengthen those connections even in the absence of the material.
Further distinction between implicit and explicit memories can be seen by looking at amne- sic patients. Because these two long-term memory storage systems have different methods of consolidation, injury to different parts of the brain will differentially disrupt them. In Chapter 5, you were introduced to the famous case of H. M. Recall that H. M. had his hippo- campus partially removed in a surgery to alleviate epilepsy. Subsequently, he lost the abil- ity to create new memories for places, names, people, and experiences. Based on what you have learned from this text, you should recognize that this represents a loss of the explicit memory system. The problem for H. M. stemmed from the fact that his hippocampus was damaged; thus he could not engage in the consolidation of new explicit memories. How- ever, most of his previous long-term memories were still intact. He retained his childhood memories and still had a bright, normal IQ; however, he did lose some memories he formed in the years before the surgery (Kandel, Schwartz, & Jessell, 2000). This would suggest that although synaptic changes occurring in the hippocampus result in the consolidation of long- term memory, the hippocampus is not the ultimate storage place for long-term memories. Instead, long-term memories are stored throughout the brain in areas of the sensory cortex and the prefrontal cortex.
H. M.’s case also provides information on the working of the implicit memory system. After the surgery, H. M. was able to learn new motor tasks at a normal rate. This was illustrated in an experiment whereby he was taught to trace the outline of a star while watching his hand in a mirror (see Figure 7.1). At first this task is difficult, but as participants practice it, their per- formance becomes better. Although H. M. had no recollection of completing the activity, his performance improved over time, indicating that he was learning (Blakemore, 1977). Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell (2000) report that tasks that tend to be reflexive and not reflective, require no conscious awareness or complex evaluation, and only require the individual to respond to a cue are generally spared in individuals with damage to the hippocampus. Thus, the implicit memory system includes memory for reflexive behaviors, skills or habits, and associative learning, which means it activates many brain areas as well. For example, a fear response to a snake might be acquired through activation of the amygdala when one has a
Ask Yourself Make a list of five activities you’ve committed to implicit memory. (Tip: your answer to the “Ask Yourself ” on neuroplastic construction in Chapter 6 might be of help.)
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Section 7.2 Key Concepts About Long-Term Memory
fearful experience with the snake. In associative learning, where we learn to respond to a cue, changes in motor and sensory systems occur. For example, if you eat something that makes you vomit, you are likely to feel nauseated the next time that you see the food. In this case, the sensory systems associate the taste, smell, and sight of the food with the feeling of being sick. As a result, you learn to avoid the food.
Figure 7.1: H. M.’s drawing task
By the third day of trials, H. M. could draw the star from his reflection with ease, even though he had no explicit memory of doing so.
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
As you can see, long-term memories, then, require the increased strengthening of neural connections throughout the brain. Long-lasting changes in our knowledge are most likely to occur when the prefrontal cortex helps us pick out information in the environment, work on it, connect it with prior knowledge, and strengthen neural connections in the hippocampus through the process of LTP.
Information that is mentally manipulated using a variety of strategies is more likely to be incorporated into neural connections and successfully stored, retrieved, maintained, and applied. When students acquire the information in a variety of ways—e.g., visualization, movement, reading, hearing, and mentally manipulating it into other representations—the activation of the short-term memory increases its connections (dendrites, synapses, myelin) to construct long-term memory. Three main categories of mental manipulation are to synthe- size, summarize, and categorize.
If information is always taught and/or used in the same way, the brain will have a limited capacity to use that information in the future. However, if instruction, practice, and appli- cation of learning include a variety of information-processing opportunities, new learning can be stored in multiple areas of the brain and connected into larger relational networks. When information is part of these concept memory networks, it is understood more deeply, maintained in enduring long-term memory, and transferrable to apply to a wider variety of contexts and problems. Multisensory learning, problem solving, and inquiry build these extended neural networks of concepts that will serve students’ future knowledge acquisition and application.
7.3 Multisensory Experiences Long-term memory network construction takes place through the neuroplastic physical response to electrical activity flowing through the circuit of neurons, axons, and synapses that make up the short-term memory. The number of connections and thickness of the myelin in the developing long-term memory circuits correlate with the frequency, duration, and type of mental manipulations performed that activate the memory through its use. This respon- siveness of the brain to activation through neuroplasticity is a powerful phenomenon that individuals are able to use to self-construct the brains they want through the exercise of the neural circuits involved in the cognitive or physical skill.
Brain plasticity associated with increased implicit memory is evident when people repeatedly practice skills they are learning. An example are the neuroimaging research studies revealing increased activity and density of dendrites and synapses in the cortex of the occipital lobes (visual memory) when subjects learned how to juggle. These regions continued to increase in metabolic activity and density of interneural connections with practice as juggling skills improved. When the subjects stopped practicing the juggling, the increased activity and thick- ness in the cortex that had formed gradually disappeared along with their skill (Draganski, Gaser, Busch, & Schuierer, 2004).
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
Long-term memory networks are constructed when short-term memory circuits encoded in the hippocampus are strengthened by repeated activation that promotes neuroplasticity. This activation can be the result of a variety of experiences and applications of new learning. When these short-term memory circuits have been activated sufficiently for the construction of dendrites, synapses, and axonal myelin to preserve the circuit, they are considered long- term memories. These long-term memories are still not permanent, and they continue to be changeable in response to their subsequent activation or disuse.
Recall from earlier in the chapter that long-term memories are formed by increased synaptic connections and that long-term explicit memories require the proper functioning of the hip- pocampus to be consolidated. However, the ultimate area of storage and retrieval of memo- ries is strongly influenced by the senses through which the information in the network is acquired. Information is processed in different brain areas depending upon the sense we use to engage with the external stimuli. For example, the occipital lobe processes visual informa- tion, and the temporal lobes process auditory information. So different neural networks will be activated depending on whether we process information through sight, sound, smell, etc., which is why multisensory exposure is so crucial to neuroplasticity and durable long-term memory formation. It is important to note that the brain is a parallel processor, meaning that it is able to simultaneously process incoming information with different qualities. Thus, when you engage in multisensory presentation of material, you will be simultaneously activating many different areas of the brain.
Multisensory Storage
Think of a red ball. It probably didn’t take you a full second to picture a red ball. You can prob- ably even imagine what the ball feels like and what it would sound like if it were bounced on the ground. You picture it with a specific shape and size. What is truly impressive is that in no place in your brain do you have one neural circuit that holds the memory of a red ball. For you to picture that red ball, there needed to be communication between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex and then activation of multiple sensory components of a red ball from multiple storage areas throughout the brain.
The color red was activated from the cortex of your occipital lobe where neurons process signals from the eyes, including color, shading, and brightness, and hold these visual com- ponents of memories. It is in the parietal lobe cortex that spatial and tactile memories are interpreted and stored. The sound of it bouncing came from the temporal lobe cortex, where auditory sensory memories are stored. For you to picture the red ball, the information was reactivated in these storage areas and reassembled within the hippocampus and the image reconstructed through its interactions with the prefrontal cortex. Figure 7.2 shows how all of these processes work together.
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
The brain captures and stores physical sensations in various cortical regions and then recre- ates them when the information is recalled to be retrieved from memory. Over time, however, if a memory isn’t recalled frequently, the brain needs to reconstruct the initial memory of the information. A problem with the reconstruction process that takes place with infrequent recall is that each time a memory is reconstructed, if it is not confirmed by facts, it can be altered and returned to storage with less accuracy. It will be these inaccurate memories that will be activated for the next retrieval. For example, you may have read and listened to formal lectures about the millennia of elapsed time between the age of dinosaurs and the evolution of humans. However, these academic experiences may only be recalled when you see science fictional representations of cavemen and dinosaurs. Eventually the original memory may be distorted with the fictional associations such that when asked about the historic ages, you may underestimate the 65 million years between the extinction of dinosaurs and the evolu- tion of the cave-dwelling ancestors of modern man.
Frequent performance, assessment, and corrective feedback for students reduce the develop- ment of inaccurate memories that have been degraded in reconstruction. We do not know yet what allows this synchronicity of activation to take place so efficiently, but we have learned that there are benefits in terms of memory when information is experienced and practiced through multiple senses.
Figure 7.2: Think of a red ball
Recall the elements of short-term working memory from Chapter 5. These elements, located within specific neural networks in each of the brain’s lobes, communicate with the hippocampus and with one another in order to store memory, as indicated by the black arrows.
Prefrontal cortex
Frontal lobe
Parietal lobe
Occipital lobe
Hippocampus
Temporal lobe
Visual and spatial input: Red, small, spherical
Auditory and language input: “This is a red ball.”
Phonological Loop
Central Executive
directs attention to
sensory input
Visuospatial Sketchpad
Episodic Buffer
Prefrontal cortex
Frontal lobe
Parietal lobe
Occipital lobe
Hippocampus
Temporal lobe
Visual and spatial input: Red, small, spherical
Auditory and language input: “This is a red ball.”
Phonological Loop
Central Executive
directs attention to
sensory input
Visuospatial Sketchpad
Episodic Buffer
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
An example of this type of research is a study where subjects viewed video clips showing hands touching a variety of objects. While the video was viewed, a recording was made of the subjects’ brain activations. Although they themselves were not touching an object, the areas of their brains that showed increased activity were the regions associated with tactile mem- ory storage as well as their visual cortex (Meyer, Kaplan, Essex, Damasio, & Damasio, 2011). The experiment illustrates that although the information being processed entered the brain via the visual system (because participants were watching video clips), it still had the ability to activate the tactile system, thus showing that areas of the brain are activated whenever the brain processes information that is relevant to that area. This finding can be important for the classroom and the real world, in that it shows that activation of multiple brain areas or mul- tiple sensory areas in the brain can be achieved by presenting information that is relevant to that sense. For example, in the classroom if you were teaching about the qualities of the brain, you might mention that the brain has the consistency of Jell-O®. By alerting students to this fact, you are giving them a richer sensory experience of what the brain is like, rather than just showing them a picture of what the brain looks like. Here, you will activate their parietal sen- sory cortex as well as their emotional limbic system when you give them information about how the brain feels.
In other areas as well—for example, the workplace or a mental health setting—you will be able to engage more of the brain if you can provide people with multiple sensory experiences. A car salesperson might have better luck selling a car if she discusses the smell of the car, the softness of the seats, or the vibrancy of the color. Or, if you were training a massage therapist, you would want to discuss the procedure for conducting the massage as well as provide your student with a picture of someone’s hands engaged in the procedure.
Multisensory Retrieval
Recall a time when you smelled perfume and it brought to mind the memory of a friend who once wore the same scent, such that you even recalled specific details about that person. Per- haps on hearing an old song, you recalled what you were doing on some occasion when you listened to it years before. You may be able to visualize where you were when you heard about a horrible event that occurred, and you may remember other details of your environment at that moment such as who was there with you, what you had just been doing, and perhaps even what you were wearing. Similarly, experiential learning that stimulates multiple senses is also more memorable and more efficiently retrieved from long-term memory.
When information is learned and practiced through a variety of sensory modalities, those memories have duplicated storage in the specific sensory cortical areas of the brain corre- sponding to each type of sensory intake. However, these separate regions of sensory memory pertaining to the same topic or experience are connected to one another by dendrites, so that the recall of one of the sensory aspects of the memory, such as what was seen, will activate the other sensory storage areas. If students watch you carry out an experiment that involves a chemical response with an odor, and also hear your description of the experiment, create graphs showing the changes in the amount of gas production over time, and discuss with partners the implications of the experiment, there will be multisensory experiences stored in their cortexes involving sensory input that is auditory, olfactory, visual, and motor.
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
Multiple sensory modalities of instruction can result in duplicated storage and a variety of cues that will stimulate retrieval of these connected multiple memory storage regions. Multi- sensory instruction and practice results in greater efficiency and likelihood that students will be able to recall the information when it is needed.
For the students who best remember the things that they see, the visual memory of the demonstra- tion or experiment may be the first activated. From there, the connecting neural networks will activate the other cortical regions holding storage of infor- mation related to the same topic that came from the other sensory experiences. The result will be the rich retrieval of a memory similar to your ability to visualize the red ball. You help students build stron- ger and more retrievable memories by using a vari- ety of sensory modalities and instruction as well as having them practice the learning through a variety of modalities such as writing, performing a skit, creating a rap, or drawing a diagram, thus extend- ing the reaches of the brain through which they can access all of the sensory memories (Thesen, Jonas, Calvert, & Österbauer, 2004; van den Heuvel, Stam, Kahn, Hilleke, & Hulshoff, 2009).
Multisensory Teaching Practices
Using a variety of teaching techniques increases the efficiency and durability of memory storage. This includes a variety of ways to activate students’ prior knowledge in order to link new learning with their existing memory categories and patterns of stored knowledge (Pressley et al., 1992).
This same multiple storage system also benefits from a variety of learning experiences on the part of the students. The best way to learn complex skills is by using them to construct mem- ory of knowledge by doing something with it. This includes the opportunities for less direct instruction and more instructor guidance as students themselves construct their knowledge and under- standing with experiential and inquiry-based learning, problem solving, project-based learning, and collabora- tive groups. Again, a variety of representations of what students learn throughout the development of a new knowledge base will increase the regions of memory storage, thus providing another source of evidence for the benefits of using writing or the arts throughout the curriculum.
Andrew Woodley/age fotostock/SuperStock
The branches and roots of a tree can look just like a neuron’s dendrites. This visual association may help to strengthen your knowledge of neural anatomy every time you step outside.
Ask Yourself Reflect on your educational experience. Have you ever experienced multisensory teaching practices? If so, what strategies were employed? What is your evaluation of this learning experience?
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
Use strategies that engage the multiple senses so students “become” the knowledge by interacting with new learning as they build their understand- ing in a variety of ways.
Here are some examples of multisensory teaching:
• A science example using multisensory experiences to build student knowledge of new context-specific words or terminology would be to have them participate in that learning through their multiple senses. After hearing and reading the definition of what an electron is, students could then visualize electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, make a buzzing sound to represent the electricity as the electron whizzes by. They could move around the room themselves to imitate orbiting electrons, and you could even rub a balloon against the wall and have the students hold it above the hair on their arms so they could feel the tingling associ- ated with the electrons’ negative charge as their hairs move. Students could then follow up with sketches of what they visualized, felt, or did when moving around the room as electrons in their atomic orbits.
• A multisensory activity for history could be the simulation of a historic battle using models of figures, armaments, transportation vehicles, and boundaries, or using more abstract objects such as simply different shapes and colored papers to repre- sent these entities. Students could work in small groups before getting the materi- als that they will use to make their representation. They would first need to build a strong understanding of the factual information and the historical interpretation, such as the reasons for the battle, who was involved, where it took place, what the surroundings were like, and what strategies were used. After the preparation, students would arrange their figures or markers, act out the battle, and explain the events to classmates. The learning could be further extended, as could the memory, if the students were then challenged to create an alternate version of the same bat- tle, changing parameters that they feel were significant in resulting in the outcome and explaining how these changes could result in the different outcome.
• In mathematics, working with addition and subtraction or positive and negative numbers using words, desktop number lines, and computer models can add motor memory by creating a number line on the floor. For younger students working with counting numbers, you could mark the number line using tape to indicate the num- ber between 0 and 10 feet. Students would then start at zero and walk to the num- ber they are given while looking down at the numbers and counting the steps as they
moodboard/SuperStock
Using colorful, tactile stimuli in learn- ing environments gives students more sensory associations to help strengthen their memories of the subject.
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
walk. Once they arrive at the number 5, you can ask them to take one, two, or three more steps and tell you what number they are now on. They could look down to confirm or look down the whole time. Later, with more knowledge, they could walk backward with the same activity for subtraction, or the number line could extend to less than zero for working with negative numbers. Classmates could write down the equations representing the movements made by the student on the number line.
• When students learn about Fibonacci sequences, the Pythagorean theorem, and how to calculate proportion and ratio from like objects, finding and evaluating these outside will increase the memory richness. Have students find the golden ratio in architecture or use the height of their shadows near noon with the height of the shadow of a building to calculate the height of the building.
• You can also create multisensory experiences for students in secondary and higher education. In a geology class, you could bring in different kinds of rocks for students to touch and identify. In political science classes, you could have students engage in debates or have mock trials of famous cases. You might also have students dress up as part of the debate or trial. In a psychology class, you could simulate a robbery in the class and later ask students questions about the robbery. Their answers will typically vary and can illustrate how eyewitness memory is flawed. These activities stimulate the senses by putting the students in the middle of the material.
• Another way to present multisensory experiences to students of any age might be to bring an expert or a professional in the field. For example, you could bring in a nurse to discuss different aspects of anatomy or health. The professionals or experts could bring special tools from their jobs, providing students an opportunity to see and touch different instruments that are used. For example, the nurse could bring a blood pressure cuff or a stethoscope, and students could have the opportunity to take their blood pressure or listen to each other’s lungs. Experts can be particularly interesting for students in higher education because they are often trying to figure out what job they will go into. By bringing in someone working in the field, you not only activate more of their senses, but you also give them ideas about how the knowledge they are learning will transfer to a career.
• Online learning makes multisensory teaching more difficult because you are lim- ited in the senses that you have to work with. However, recall from the Meyer et al. (2011) experiment that simply viewing information about other senses can activate the brain area associated with the sense. So, you might use pictures of sensory expe- riences to illustrate concepts to students. You could use pictures of someone smell- ing a gas or a chemical to access the olfactory sense. While discussing where calories come from in a health class, you could use pictures of individuals eating different types of foods. It is also important to use the senses that you do have access to— the visual and auditory senses. Be sure to incorporate video clips, pictures, songs, recordings, etc., into your teaching to make the material come to life for students.
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Section 7.3 Multisensory Experiences
Meeting the Needs of Individual Learners: Sensory Impairments
Close your eyes for a second and imagine learning with visual and/or auditory impairment. What would you need to be a successful learner? Information in classrooms and learning environments is generally presented in oral and visual modalities (lectures, PowerPoint, group discussions), which makes sense when many students learn best via those modalities. But what about those who aren’t successful visual or auditory learners? Professional development and curricula are less often geared toward working with these sensory processing systems. This may result in some professionals, including educators, psychologists, and social workers, lacking experience or training in working with students who have other challenges, such as sensory impairments. In order to be prepared to work with individuals who are deaf, hearing impaired, blind, or visually impaired, we as professionals need to be educated about the most prevalent disorders and what we can do to allow for a positive learning experience.
Cortical visual impairment (CVI) is one of the leading causes of vision loss in children. It is characterized by visual impairment that involves acuity and/or higher visual functions, such as visual motor planning. CVI is caused by posterior visual pathway disease and can cause poor visual attention, visual field abnormalities, difficulty with object and facial recognition, difficulty with locating objects (Lehman, 2013), light gazing (compulsive staring into lights), and preferences for certain colors (in addition to other symptoms). According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD, 2010), approximately 2 to 3 out of 1,000 children are born deaf or hard of hearing, and 9 out of every 10 children who are born deaf have parents who can hear. Individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing often experience difficulty with speaking and language comprehension/acquisition.
While both visual and auditory accommodations can vary depending on the severity of the impairment, there are some general practices that professionals can implement. For children who have visual and auditory impairment, activate their senses by providing opportunity for hands-on interactions with objects. This is also good for children in the classroom without impairment to activate their other learning modalities. Move around—this will allow the individuals to understand their learning space and boundaries within the classroom, especially for those who are visually impaired. These experiences can improve the learning environment by creating a sense of security and comfort in the classroom. Additionally, movement and exercise can increase the level of “feel-good neurotransmitters” such as dopamine and norepinephrine for all learners. Be mindful of your tone of voice, clarity of language, seating arrangements, and nonverbal communication. Encourage the students and their families to get involved in local organizations that provide support and resources for these disabilities, which can help create a sense of community. Educate all of your students about disabilities and make it a common practice to ask questions and express feelings about individual differences. For younger students, check in with parents on strategies and ideas that work well at home and try to implement them into the classroom or your professional space. Engage in professional development and learn from these students with your eyes and ears open—they have a lot to teach us.
Joanna Savarese, Ph.D.
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Section 7.4 Interference
7.4 Interference Another important factor to consider in the formation of long-term memories is interference. Interference in learning refers to the ability of new or old to get in the way of memory consoli- dation. When new material interferes with previously learned material, it is referred to as ret- roactive interference. In contrast, when old material interferes with your ability to learn new information, this is referred to as proactive interference. Consider the following examples:
• You create a new email password, but your memory of your old password interferes with your ability to recall the new password.
• You learn how to count to 20 in French and are now unable to remember how to count to 20 in Spanish.
In the first example, you are unable to learn something new because of an old memory. This illustrates proactive interference. In the second example, you learn something new and it interferes with information previously stored in your memory. This illustrates retroactive interference.
Interference often occurs when old and new information compete with each other (Myers, 2008). In the examples above, the information is very similar (i.e., passwords or learning lan- guages); thus the information is likely to compete and cause forgetting.
In the classroom you can prevent interference by planning the way that information is pre- sented. When information that is similar is presented close in time, more interference is likely to occur. However, if the material is properly spaced, positive transfer can occur. Positive transfer refers to the facilitation of learning when information is related (Myers, 2008). For example, if you have a strong foundation in Spanish, it is likely to facilitate the learning of French. In contrast, if you attempt to learn them both at the same time, they are likely to com- pete. In the classroom or the workplace you can increase positive transfer by making sure that individuals display mastery of a certain concept or task before moving on to something that is similar.
Another aspect of interference is the serial position effect. The serial position effect refers to our tendency to display better memory for information that we learn first and information that we learn last. For example, Reed (2000) presented participants with a series of odors. Individuals displayed better recall for smells that were presented at the beginning and at the end (see Figure 7.3). In looking at the serial position effect over the course of a semester, Kurbat, Shevell, and Rips (1998) found that college students tended to remember personal events that happened at the beginning and end of the semester better than events in the middle of the semester. The memory for items that are at the beginning is referred to as the primacy effect, and the memory for items at the end is referred to as the recency effect. With respect to interference theory, the primacy effect would be a correlate of proactive inter- ference, if one remembers the first information or the old information. In contrast, the recency effect is proposed to be a result of retroactive interference, if the material learned last inter- feres with one’s ability to recall the earlier information. Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) model of memory suggested that the primacy effect proposed that individuals have more time to consolidate the earlier information. Research into this area has theorized that the primacy effect is stronger than the recency effect (Mollet & Harrison, 2007; Onifade, Jackson, Chang, Thorne, & Allen, 2011; Scott, 2005; Zhao, 1997), but this research has not been adequately
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Section 7.4 Interference
evaluated by neuroscience studies in the first-line research journals, so the jury is still out. If learners seem to respond to primacy or recency regarding particular topics, you can consider whether it is useful when planning instruction or meetings.
During downtime you can make use of the brain breaks you learned about in Chapter 4. For constructing long-term memory, the brain breaks can also be an opportunity to have stu- dents participate in learning through a different sensory modality. You can give brain breaks to one sense at a time. It is during the brain break that students build their understanding and make meaning of the previous information, and the brain can recognize the connections and pattern the information into storage appropriately. During this time, you can help to create extensions of neural networks to consolidate the memory by having students experience the learning in another sensory modality.
One sensory modality change that would be useful in a brain break is for students to atten- tively watch a video without taking notes and then convert what they heard into written notes during the brain break, actively interpreting what they saw. Shifting learning to a different sensory modality will not only promote the storage of the memory in multiple areas of the brain, but will also allow the region of the cortex that had been actively receiving the input to have a brain break during which neurotransmitters can be restored to the axon terminals in the networks that have been active.
In terms of learning over the course of the term, Onifade et al. (2011) described primacy effects for course material in four of five exams in an accounting course. Their interpretation suggested that information presented earlier in the term is more likely to be committed to
Figure 7.3: The serial position effect
According to some studies of memory construction, the information learned at the beginning and the end of a class will probably be clearer than things learned toward the middle.
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Section 7.5 Rote Memorization Efficiency
long-term memory. As a result, they suggest giving assessments that are continuously cumu- lative for students to give them more opportunity to practice prior information and create long-term memories of the material.
Research of the primacy and recency effects has also looked into online behavior. Murphy, Hofacker, and Mizerski (2006) found that individuals are more likely to click on the first and the last link in a list; however, they regarded the primacy effect, or clicking on the first link, as stronger. Although this is not directly related to the long-term consolidation of memories, it allows students to begin the first part of memory formation—encoding—which you learned about in Chapter 5. If individuals access the information, they will have the opportunity to encode it. Thus, this finding has implications for online course design and also for the business world. In an online course, educators should place the most important links first and last. Busi- nesses that are creating websites for consumers should consider placing their important links at the beginning and ends of lists as well, to better ensure that individuals access these links.
7.5 Rote Memorization Efficiency It is certainly necessary to have automaticity in retrieving necessary foundational informa- tion upon which further understanding and concepts can be developed. It is necessary, for example, to memorize certain sight words for reading, multiplication tables, definitions of context-specific vocabulary words, and certain formulas in science so that this information is readily and automatically available. Unless students have the foundational vocabulary—verbs and nouns—of a foreign language memorized, they do not have a basis on which to learn the verb conjugation needed to build fluency. Without rote activation of multiplication facts, stu- dents cannot smoothly practice the multistep process of long division.
To think critically, students need this foundational knowledge so they can focus their active thinking on building the more advanced skills or conceptual knowledge within subject areas. Without understanding terminology such as plot, theme, or point of view, students will not be able to discuss comparative literature or literary tech- niques. Once students know the form and function of the main parts of a cell, such as mitochondria, nucleus, cell wall, and cytoplasm, they have the memory tem- plates on which they can build understanding of cellu- lar metabolism and DNA replication.
There are strategies for this type of memorization that are more efficient in terms of time required and durabil- ity of the memorized facts. For example, self-testing, in which students respond to questions and then immedi- ately check their answers, is more successful than simply rereading the facts again and again. This makes sense based on the brain’s prediction-reward response and the neuroplastic cor- rective or strengthening that takes place when there is immediate feedback. In an examina- tion of the effects of testing on learning, Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had undergraduates read a short excerpt from a text. After reading the text, one group of students participated in a free recall test, while another group was given time to study the text again. One week later a free recall test was given to all the participants. The participants who participated in
Ask Yourself What types of information have you been required to memorize as a student? Make a list of five items, and then assess if you feel it was constructive to have engaged in such memorization or if it was not.
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Section 7.5 Rote Memorization Efficiency
the original test performed better. These results and others like it (e.g., Karpicke & Roediger, 2008; Zaromb & Roediger, 2010) illustrate that self-testing can be an effective method for the consolidation of long-term memories.
In a review of literature on practice testing and learning outcomes, Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, and Willingham (2013) stated that frequency and timing of the practice test are also factors in retention. As might be expected, more is better in practice testing; however, the testing should be spaced out over time and across different learning sessions. Encourage your students to engage in practice testing at different points during their study sessions and on different days. Students can engage in practice testing in a variety of ways. One of the easiest is free recall. After reading material, students could attempt to remember as many things as they can from the text. Another option described by Dunlosky et al. (2013) is to have students engage in the Cornell note-taking system. Here, students leave blanks in their notes for key terms. Later, they go back in and fill in the blanks as a method of self-testing. Other options for students include practice problems at the end of chapters or electronic supplements provided with textbooks.
Increasing the personal relevance of information that must be memorized also increases the efficiency of developing the accurate long-term memories. When there is a desired goal that
the students understand will be within their reach once they have successfully memorized the founda- tional knowledge, they will have more motivation to persevere with the repeated activities needed to acquire that knowledge. Reading a magazine about their favorite topic motivates the memorization of sight words and context-specific words.
When skills and facts that must be memorized are taught and practiced as part of solving interesting, meaningful problems, the learning is richer; confi- dence and relational understanding develop in a context of meaning. When students are engaged through personal interest and real-world use of the procedures and rote memory facts that are the basis of future learning, they feel the learning is useful and worth their effort. When students see the value of what they are asked to learn, they are motivated to build the foundations they need to achieve per- sonally meaningful goals. Knowing why memorizing multiplication facts is important helps student moti- vation because they understand why it is worth their effort to rehearse these facts until they are mastered. It also helps when students understand how the brain constructs durable long-term memo- ries so that they understand that practice does make permanent.
Motivate rote memorization with goals: For the times tables have a series of questions that stu- dents are given when they study the particular level
Frank Dicksee (1884) Bridgeman Art Library, London/SuperStock
Fostering a personal relevance to course material increases the abil- ity to memorize and understand the material. Understanding the narrative of Romeo and Juliet in the context of a person’s lusts and loves will allow that person to better understand plot, char- acter, and themes.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
of multiplication. If the students like horses, the questions to motivate the four times table could be, “How many horseshoes would be needed if you have six horses needing shoes on each hoof ? How about three horses? Eight ponies?” Similar types of questions about per- sonally relevant items are how many car wheels are needed for five cars, or if there would be enough seats for the whole class to get to a kite-flying hill if they had six vans with seven passenger seats in each. Illustrations of these objects made by the students add to the moti- vation and can scaffold the learning.
You can also refer back to the information in Chapter 4 regarding the motivating feedback of students seeing their increasing goal progress as they build their foundational memorization. An example would be a chart that includes all of the numbers from 1 to 10 both horizontally and vertically with the product of multiplying the horizontal with the vertical column placed in the squares inside this chart. As students master the multiplication facts, they cross off the boxes and are able to see their ongoing progress as the number of boxes remaining progres- sively decreases.
Online learning games also provide a motivating way of memorizing required facts and infor- mation because of the video game model pleasure that students experience when playing games on their computers. In addition to going directly to familiar online learning games, you can also go to websites that list and provide links to games with descriptions to help you select the games that would be best suited for students’ needs. One such example is Graphite, a free service from Common Sense Media, available at http://www.graphite.org.
7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
Beyond the required rote memorization described earlier, for most learning, stopping at rote memorization limits the development of durable long-term memory networks. The rote memories may be strong in terms of isolated skills, facts, or procedures held within their individual neural circuits, but without further mental manipulation students will not develop the extended neural networks linking these facts to the big ideas within units and subjects.
The quantity and accuracy of rote memories do not confirm that the student has an under- standing of content information. It is necessary to do something with knowledge if it is to become incorporated into more extended memory networks of core concepts that can be applied in meaningful ways. Without further use of the rote-memorized data, it is likely to be forgotten. A classic experiment in psychology conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) illustrated the forgetting curve (see Figure 7.4). The forgetting curve illustrates that forgetting occurs rapidly at first for information that is not used. Over time, though, the forgetting levels off. For example, Bahrick (1984) examined how long individuals retained Spanish vocabulary learned in school. He found that most of the forgetting occurs in the first 3–6 years out of school. However, after that forgetting levels off and remains stable for about 20 years. Additionally, individuals who were trained at higher levels and received higher grades retained the information longer. This study illustrates the effect of the forgetting curve in that the material decayed rapidly and then the forgetting leveled off.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
Many things that students memorize for the purpose of answering questions on tests do not support understanding or provide useful and applicable knowledge because these rote memories, if learned only in response to specific stimuli prompts, will only be available for retrieval to those same specific prompts.
Rote memorization should be reserved for the items described previously, such as multipli- cation tables and sight words. When students memorize single-answer data without under- standing important concepts and the reasons behind theories, formulas, or procedures, they are not likely to construct the understanding that is needed for successful learning and appli- cation of knowledge. We see the phenomenon all too frequently when students “memorize” and soon forget facts that are of little primary interest or emotional value, such as a list of vocabulary words. They might practice these with enough repetition to retrieve them for sin- gle answers to direct test questions, but unless they are able to interact with these words in meaningful ways that give context to the rote memorizations, it is likely that what they memo- rize will be pruned away soon after the drill practice stops. These same principles hold true in the workplace as well. Employees who simply memorize the steps to complete a certain task are not likely to notice when a mistake is present or they are not likely to understand how to solve a more complex problem regarding the task. Instead they need to understand the con- cept completely to be able to perform at a high level.
Figure 7.4: A theory of memory and forgetting: The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve
Facts from rote memorization are likely to be forgotten very quickly if they are not reinforced and applied in meaningful ways.
Source: Based on Ebbinghaus, H. (1885/1913). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
Help students and individuals develop the extended long-term memory networks that hold learning into relational patterns by activating prior knowledge and by continuing to rein- force connections between new learning related to memory patterns that you know they have already constructed. It is often only from the perspective of a teacher that the associa- tions between new and previous learning, as well as ongoing learning, can be recognized as related. Students need guidance to recognize these relationships that will ultimately promote memory storage into durable extended networks of understanding and memory. This section will describe a number of effective teaching strategies that will help students mentally manipulate new learning through active engagement and recognition of patterns so that neuroplasticity works its magic to sustain the short-term memories as part of long- term memory networks.
Symbolize (Translate)
Mental manipulation for the neuroplastic response is greatly facilitated when students have the opportunity to symbolize new learning in different representations—in other words, translating acquired knowledge into different forms. First, consider the type of symbolizing that supports the mental manipulation. This type of symbolizing requires that the student understand the information just as for an accurate translation of text from one language to another requires understanding of both languages. If you were to take a sentence in English and translate it into Portuguese using only an English-Portuguese dictionary but without an understanding of the Portuguese language, it is unlikely the translation would truly convey the meaning of the sentence. Just as accurate and meaningful translation of language requires both understanding and mental manipulation, so too does the type of symbolizing that pro- motes accurate and durable long-term memory require understanding.
Examples of symbolizing, or representing learning in ways different from that in which it was acquired, include designing a Web page or PowerPoint presentation; creating a board game; making a brochure or advertising materials for a specific product or service; or trans- lating the learning into the arts such as by making a video, skit, song, or drawing. Teaching the information to someone also requires understanding when the learner does not have the prior knowledge such that the information needs to be put into language appropriate for the learner. Recall from Chapter 4 that when students teach or prepare to teach material, they are more likely to retain the material (Gregory, Walker, McLaughlin, & Peets, 2011). Thus, having students teach concepts to younger students or to each other can increase the likelihood that they will consolidate them to long-term memory.
Creating a narrative in which students can translate learning into a story or dialogue increases long-term memory as well as promoting the positive effects of personalizing information to increase its memory linkage. One of my students, for example, wrote an amusing story about a lonely piece of new information that entered the brain and felt very lost and sad until it found its family of related prior knowledge to link with as part of a new long-term memory extended network.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
Another way to help students symbol- ize the information is to have them create physical models of the material. Models can be created in a variety of ways, including making a volcano, cut- ting circles into pizza slices to illus- trate fractions, or having students use their fists to represent the different hemispheres of the brain.
Although these are great ways to get students interested in material, keep in mind that the goal is understanding and knowledge construction. Dean, Hubbell, Pitler, and Stone (2012) suggest that students might often get caught up in the materials and the models themselves and neglect to pay attention to the content. The goal of the activities should not be the busy work of the project or use of supplies. As fellow educator Jay McTighe says, be sure that “the juice is worth the squeeze” (private communication). Students need to keep in mind that when symbolizing knowledge not only do they need to understand the information, but they also should be able to explain how their representation demonstrates the essential material and the information that they were expected to learn as the goals of the unit.
Synthesize/Summarize
In order to summarize information concisely, students need to understand it well enough to synthesize a large quantity of information down into the essential gist and to incorporate it into a logical progression of infor- mation in the summary. As with synthesizing, a sum- mary would need to demonstrate understanding of the learning goals of the instruction or reading. Students
are often invited to summarize with partners or in small groups, for example. This is an effec- tive approach if the students are able to stay focused on the task and receive feedback as to whether their summary is accurate and appropriately comprehensive.
A strategy that is helpful in serving these requirements is for students to create a Tweet™ as a summary (alternatively, they could write the summary on paper that has the 140 spaces that are allowed in a Tweet™). This would be a task they do independently or after a pair share. The sharing in this case would be more focused because the students would need to take the larger amount of information and define the essential essence that could be communicated in such a small amount of text. If these are indeed created on a computer, they can be posted by students on a class wiki or moodle either with the students’ names or instructor-provided codes. Classmates benefit by reading each other’s summaries as additional ways to under- stand the content of the material.
Other written forms of concise summarizing include blogs, haikus, and the use of dend-writes as follows. Dend-writes (so named so students are reminded that with mental manipulation
Ask Yourself Can you think of a way to symbolize the process of long-term memory construction? Look back at some of the strategies suggested in this section and see if you can employ one to more effectively learn the core concept of this chapter.
Fred Benenson
In 2013, Emoji Dick, a pictorial rewrite of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick, was the first novel of its kind accepted into the Library of Congress. As emot- icons become a greater part of modern social media literacy, they can also be effective tools for students to symbolize information and create narratives.
Call me Ishmael.Call me Ishmael.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
they are promoting the neuroplasticity that changes dendrites) offer opportunities to synthe- size or summarize learning in response to specific prompts as mental manipulations in which new learning is actively processed. The memory is strengthened by the personal relevance and insights they can include in the dend-write.
You will find that after creating your dend-write prompts, they will be useful throughout the course or semester regarding almost any of the material that you teach. Students can keep a copy of these dend-writes in their notebooks, or they could remain on the classroom wall or website. Because there is a variety, different dend-writes could be assigned depending on your goal for assessment and feedback and also as ways to differentiate the level of achievable challenge for students with different levels of mastery. Dend-writes can be used throughout class instruction during brain breaks, as exit cards before students leave class, or as home- work. Examples of dend-write prompts include the following:
• Write what today’s lesson reminded you of, or how what you learned fits with what you already know.
• What is the one thing you’d like to remember about today’s lesson? • Draw a picture, diagram, or graphic organizer of what you learned. • How does something you learned today relate to something in your life? • Write about something that made you wonder or that surprised you. • What do you predict you will learn next in class? • How could you (or someone in a profession) use this knowledge? • Write about something you are confused about or found difficult. • Write about what you understood today that you haven’t understood before.
A technique for younger students would be to have them create and decorate their own tele- phones, such as with paper towel rolls. After a topic is discussed, they would meet with part- ners to summarize the main points of the instruction. In order to keep their conversations focused on the material, you would tell students that they have the opportunity to use their handmade phones to call anyone of their choice, real or imaginary, and tell them a summary of what they just learned. In order to keep their summaries concise so they synthesize the new learning, students would be told that they only have 1 minute left on their phone cards, so they need to practice with their partner a verbal summary that can be shared in less than 1 minute.
Categorize/Pattern Linking
Recall that one of the prime directives of the brain is to seek patterns. As you learned in Chapter 5, short-term memory is essentially a pattern-matching process. Long-term memory continues with the brain’s system of storing, extending, and retrieving memory through pat- tern linkage. Examples of pattern retrieval as the mechanism for long-term memory recall include remembering the words to a familiar song after hearing the first few bars of music or knowing under which category to search the Internet when you want the answer to a spe- cific question or to make a specific purchase. In statistics and economics, graphs are used to reveal patterns. Patterns, once revealed, are used to develop concepts that describe phe- nomena such as cause and effect or supply and demand. Pattern construction and expansion are the underlying powerful tools of memory that best serve the survival need of being able to predict the meaning of changes in the environment or the most suitable response to new sensory input and experiences.
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
The essence of intelligence in mammals, in terms of making the most accurate and successful predictions (choices, answers, interpretations, hypotheses), is an outcome of accurate and extensive long-term memory stores with information consolidated in categories based on patterns such as commonalities and relationships. Long-term memory is stored in networks based on these commonalities and relationships. As you’ve read about multisensory memo- ries, information related to a common object, experience, or topic can be stored in multiple cortical areas in the brain that are connected through neural pathways such that they are acti- vated almost simultaneously after one aspect of the memory is recalled. This process of syn- chronous activation of related but separately stored components of memory gives additional support to the strengthening of memory through increasing students’ awareness of multiple and varied patterns or categories to which new learning relates.
Mental manipulation through categorizing and expanded pattern connections promotes both long-term memory storage and the likelihood that the brain will be successful in activating the most appropriate memory from storage to respond to changes in the environment and to make the best predictions. You increase your students’ memory and knowledge by promoting memory connections with patterning and providing opportunities for them to relate new information to a variety of categorizing experiences, such as comparisons, analogies, and graphic organizers.
Similarities and differences provide a way to mentally manipulate new infor- mation by connecting to existing cate- gories of memory and expanding upon them. Recall the fox that responded to change or differences in the pattern of his environment with increased atten- tion. Having students evaluate new learning for similarities and differences is consistent with the brain’s respon- siveness to pattern matching and alert- ness to changes in patterns.
There are multiple strategies for using similarities and differences in the class- room, such as graphic organizers, like Venn diagrams, or having students cre- ate their own systems of categorization. You can model the process of identify- ing similarities and differences multi- ple times for students, and ask them to
explain their thinking as they compare and classify items (Willis, 2012). See the Web Resources section of this chapter for links to more about these strategies.
Analogies (similes, metaphors) are other forms of categorizing to develop cognition and reason- ing and to create long-term memory networks. Creating analogies allows students to recognize the existing related memory patterns that they have in their own brains. An example would be children who know the color white but not the color blue. An analogy that could be used to guide their understanding of the color blue would be “white is to snow as blue is to sky.”
Spencer Grant/age fotostock/SuperStock
Color-coded tiles like these are often used to help dyslexic individuals learn to spell and read words. Different-colored tiles represent different let- ter and word sounds in English. What other types of students might benefit from this multisensory approach?
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Section 7.6 Mental Manipulations to Construct Durable Long-Term Memory
The analogy helps them to recognize the relationship of the color name to something that they know. Because they know that snow is white, when they see the association of the sky with the color name that is novel to them—blue—the new word blue takes on meaning and memory links through this patterning. When students create their own analogies using new information and learning, they are personalizing the connections to memory patterns that are already strong in their brains such that they are activated spontaneously when they are creating the analogy.
An example of a simile a student would create to acknowledge the benefits of neuroplasticity might be, “Mentally manipulating what I learned makes my memories more permanent, like exercising makes my muscles stronger.”
Graphic organizers are particularly useful for long-term memory construction and extension as well as for activating prior knowledge. Depending on the selection of the graphic orga- nizer used, it can initially provide templates where students write down what they already know about a subject, and they then can add to their graphic organizers as new information is learned. Through the structure of the graphic organizer, there is already a pattern to coincide with the brain’s responsiveness to patterns.
Mental Manipulation for Test Review
MOVES is an acronym for students to use to stimulate and strengthen multiple neural net- works of memory with a variety of sensory and mental manipulative strategies.
M: Move/Manipulate. Move around and use a physical action to remind you of a character’s traits, a historical event, or a biological or physical process. Alternatively, manipulate objects to act out important information.
O: Organize. Create graphic organizers such as timelines and charts to review important details in patterned ways.
V: Visualize. Visualize scientific processes, historical characters, and mathe- matical procedures in your mind so that you’ll have a visual network to link to when you want to retrieve the information.
E: Enter. Enter the information you want to remember by typing it into a com- puter or writing it by hand. This combines tactile and visual memory.
S: Say. Read it aloud. Reading your notes or important passages aloud adds auditory memory to your networks of information retrieval.
Summarizing Mental Manipulations
Practice really does make permanent—as long as the practice involves active mental manipu- lation, construction of new ideas, and truly using the new information in different ways than that in which it was originally learned. Mental manipulation is not what happens when stu- dents passively repeat procedures over and over on worksheets; it requires multisensory engagement to activate and strengthen a wider array of neural networks (Willis, 2013).
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Section 7.7 Teaching for Beyond the Classroom: Concept Memory and Transfer
Successful mental manipulations enable students to interact with knowledge in ways that arouse their interest, activate positive emotions, connect the new information with their past experiences, and emphasize relationships of new memory to existing neural networks of long-term memory. With mental manipulation, a new memory that might otherwise be for- gotten is linked to and retained in a more durable memory storage pathway.
Through opportunities such as symbolic representations, synthesizing, and categorizing, newly encoded short-term neural connections holding bits of facts or procedures undergo the cellular changes of neuroplasticity and link into stronger and more durable long-term memory networks. Further mental manipulation promoting memory storage redundancy and interconnections of pathways means greater potential for memory retention, recall, and more successful predictions.
7.7 Teaching for Beyond the Classroom: Concept Memory and Transfer
The goal of education is for students to be successful beyond the classroom, not the accumu- lation of bits of information memorized to answer questions on tests. To achieve valued learn- ing goals, students need opportunities to use new learning in applications beyond fact memorization and retrieval or else there will be limited storage in small memory circuits that remain isolated rather than developing into extended, transferable neural networks of con- cepts. Without incorporation into these extended concept networks, isolated memories will likely be pruned away from disuse.
The degree to which students understand the relation- ships of new learning to existing knowledge correlates with the richness of the cortical connections among neural networks. The richness of these connections is then reflected in subsequent success in the application of learning to new problems and to understanding new information (Gazzaniga, 2009).
The brain’s neuroplasticity is available to build the neu- ral pathways of conceptual, relational circuits. This con- struction requires opportunities for meaning-making
activities where students can make their own predictions, attempt to solve problems, deter- mine what information they need to do so, and decide what resources they can use to acquire the knowledge needed to reach desirable goals. When students construct understanding and make connections between existing unrelated islands of memory by co-activating them together for common goals, neuroplasticity constructs connecting pathways linking new rela- tionships into expanded concept networks available for the application of learning to new problems and to understanding new information.
Ask Yourself Have you ever been able to transfer knowledge in one aspect of your life to help you in another? For example, have you ever used lessons you learned by playing a sport to help you at work or at school? Or vice versa?
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Section 7.7 Teaching for Beyond the Classroom: Concept Memory and Transfer
Teaching for Construction of Concept Memory
In his interpretation of Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) videos of successful mathematics teachers in Japan, Alan Siegel described characteristics that appeared to contribute to students’ conceptual understanding and successful transfer of these concepts to solving new problems. He noted the use of a problem-based approach that blended tradi- tional teacher-directed mini-lessons alternating with student-centered independent effort to solve the problems. He stated that even though students rarely solved the challenge problem on their own, their grappling with the problems (with the teacher circulating, giving hints to individual students after observing their independent progress) motivated attentive and suc- cessful learning from the mini-lessons that demonstrated how to apply solution methods to the problem. Further benefits were attributed to having students then apply the approach to new problems in slightly different contexts to help them solidify their understanding of the concept as they solved these problems (Siegel, 2004). Recommendations can be found at http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/siegel/ST11.pdf *.
Understanding a topic provides the foundation for remembering or reconstructing facts or methods even when memorized formulas or algorithms are forgotten. This takes place when students reconstruct formulas, etc., to make their own predictions, attempt to solve problems, and determine what information they need to achieve desirable goals. Information is under- stood when students can communicate its meaning, reconstruct the procedures, and transfer learning to novel applications.
The more brain experiences students have to relate information held in separate memory networks, the greater the number of memory circuit co-activations there will be to con- struct more cross-brain connections among these networks. Options include the following suggestions:
• Teaching in a variety of ways (e.g. video, demonstration, trial and error, primary sources and different opinions) and with multisensory experiences allows students to interact with learning connected in more ways and build the cross-brain network connections associated with concept knowledge.
• Help students identify and expand knowledge with awareness of patterns and relationships. Plan unit instruction to emphasize and promote recognition of pat- terns by asking essential questions to serve as organizing templates of core concepts to which learning can be linked. Essential questions help connect experiences and interests with real-world problems. Additionally, to be effective they should require students to use the same understanding that experts in the world use (McTighe & Self, 2013). Examples of essential questions are, “How does the shape and size of a container influence what it can hold?” “Why was slavery the greatest issue of dis- agreement between the North and South in provoking the Civil War?” “What makes the sea the best home for some creatures and land the best for others?” Asking essential questions can help you create a different level of understanding in your students. Perkins and Blythe (1994) describe the difference between knowing and understanding. They describe knowing as being able to bring forth information upon request. However, understanding requires more thought and is being able to perform a number of things with the information and also advance the information.
*Link used by permission of Professor Alan Siegel.
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Section 7.7 Teaching for Beyond the Classroom: Concept Memory and Transfer
Asking your students essential questions helps them engage in activities that will promote understanding of a topic. The questions require them to think and expand on a topic. Perkins and Blythe (1994) also point out that to promote understanding teachers should create goals for understanding, give students opportunities to per- form their understanding, and provide opportunities for ongoing assessment so that students can reflect on their own level of understanding.
• Opportunities to come back to essential questions and reflect on the big ideas students construct during a unit can include discussions, essays, and even stopping several times during a unit to have students write “headlines” as if for a news article about the new “big ideas” they recognize.
• Encourage extended student responses to questions of “Why do you think that?” so students increase awareness of the concepts behind the information and thus increase the connections within their pattern networks.
• Pattern extension increases memory extension into concepts. Include questions in classwork, homework, projects, and assessments that require more than one specific memorized answer. In mathematics, in addition to showing the steps they used to solve a problem, have students explain their thinking and why they selected the pro- cedure they used. In literature, don’t stop with just what literary tools (flashbacks, foreshadowing, omniscient narrator) the author uses, but ask why students think they were used and if they found them effective.
• Spiraling of curricula throughout grade levels has the value of students revisiting topics where they use and reactivate their core knowledge while progressively build- ing related knowledge onto these cores as they develop greater concept awareness.
• Interdisciplinary and cross-curricular units emphasize related concepts and ways of approaching problems found throughout a variety of subject domains.
Transfer
A most effective practice for understanding and memory is the use of the newly linked neu- rons in new ways other than those in which the information was learned. As Jan Visser wrote in his 2003 essay, “Science and Ambiguity: Have We Thrown the Key Away,” “The essence of wisdom is not in what we know, but in what we do with what we know and our capacity to reflect on its meaning and use.”
The Brain at Work
People in cash-handling positions, like bank tellers, can use the strategies of goal reflection and incremental goal progress on the job to help memorize procedures for identifying counterfeit money. The employees can be invited to add to a wall chart each time they recognize a counterfeit bill and indicate what cued them to make the identification. There can be an employee-generated list of why they want to make those identifications, such as to reduce taxpayer burden, increase team score in an office-generated or inter-branch competition, or busting criminals.
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Section 7.7 Teaching for Beyond the Classroom: Concept Memory and Transfer
Transfer refers to applying knowledge learned in one context to solve problems in novel con- texts. Students need transfer opportunities to apply new learning to novel applications such as solving new types of problems, critically analyzing information, and applying new proce- dures and learning to make meaning of new data. This will not happen with rote memoriza- tion alone in which isolated networks of facts do not interconnect:
Knowledge learned at the level of rote memory rarely transfers. Transfer most likely occurs when the learner knows and understands underlying principles that can be applied to problems in new contexts. Learning with understand- ing is more likely to promote transfer than simply memorizing information from a text or a lecture. (McTighe & Seif, 2013)
Transfer is a most effective practice for strengthening understanding by applying newly linked memory circuits in new ways when school learning can be transferred to real-life situ- ations. When students know the information they are being asked to learn will be used to create products or solutions to problems that interest them, the new learning and its practice are valued because they want to know what they have to learn. Transfer tasks that are planned so students can engage through strengths and interests to achieve goals they consider rele- vant are powerful learning motivators and memory enhancers. The expectation that new learning will be applied to desired goals increases the strength of memories through their association with positive emotions. Fogarty (2009) states that the surest way to promote transfer is to create a need for immediate use of the knowledge. In some cases, transfer occurs easily; students can see the connection between the material and their lives. In other cases, such as learning the periodic table of elements, transfer is more difficult. In these cases, stu- dents need guidance from teachers to see the application of the material (Fogarty, 2009).
An example of transfer for the multiple purposes of motivation, conceptual long-term memory, and mental manipulation is project-based learning with multiple options of approaches and solutions. Robotic design is an example using physics, biology, engineering, math, Internet research, economics, language arts, and graphic arts that also incorpo- rates real-world problems and student interests and offers a variety of opportunities to contribute through individual strengths in collaborative group projects. Robotic limb replacement or mechanical enhancement of healthy arms and legs could link the classroom construction of robots to the con- struction of robotic devices for people who have lost limbs in battle (current events/history) or in athletic injuries (connecting with student interest in sports). Students could also choose to transfer their learning to work on robotic limb enhance- ments that could theoretically increase their skills in their own high-interest sports, such as jumping higher to get more “air time” for skiing or snow- board maneuvers.
Flirt/SuperStock
Opportunities for transfer are every- where, and it is up to you to find them.
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Summary and Resources
The neuroplasticity that results from the repeated firing of memory circuits used together is what strengthens the rich cross-connecting bonds of concept networks. These expanded concept networks can be more easily activated by a multitude of cues, are readily retrievable to apply as more abstract understanding to solve new problems, and are ultimate resources for creative innovation.
There are no known upper limits on how we can learn and store through cross-brain cortical connections. Intelligence as a measure of making the best predictions is well served by acti- vating these extended memory banks of related knowledge. These networks of conceptual knowledge are called into action when learning is transferred to novel applications and when attempting to make the best predictions in the analysis and utilization of new learning in and beyond the classroom.
From the planning of lessons with essential questions to the transfer of the resulting concepts to new problems, the curiosity-prediction-inquiry-feedback-revision process promotes the kind of long-term memory and knowledge that students can transfer beyond the classroom in the multiple contexts in which they will live their lives.
Summary and Resources • Long-term memory can be divided into implicit and explicit memory. Memory con-
solidation for implicit memories involves LTS, and consolidation for explicit memo- ries involves LTP.
• When newly encoded short-term memory circuits are activated by mental manipu- lation (synthesizing, summarizing, categorizing, etc.) or used, especially in novel applications, neuroplasticity acts to develop them into long-term memory networks with increased strength, durability, and speed of retrieval.
• Long-term memories are stored in different parts of the cortex depending on which sensory receptors responded to the input.
• Multisensory teaching, practice, and application of new learning promote construc- tion of long-term memory circuits that can be activated by multiple sensory stimuli. Because multisensory learning increases memory storage locations and connections, switching instruction or practice to another sensory modality during brain breaks will restore neurotransmitters to the region that has been active and promote multi- focal memory storage.
• Interference can occur when newly learned material or previously learned material gets in the way of memory consolidation.
• The primacy and recency effects refer to cognitive psychology theories about mem- ory relationship to the timing of information presentation.
• Self-testing with self-checking of answers can be used as a strategy to help students increase rote memorization of foundational knowledge.
• Concept memory understanding can connect previously separate memory networks that can be developed with students’ construction of knowledge and their use of learning for new applications. These extended concept memories are then available in the future to transfer learning to new applications and innovations.
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Summary and Resources
Web Resources http://www.graphite.org Graphite, a free service from Common Sense Media, gives you information about online games for fact mastery practice for different age groups and topics, along with other useful information.
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/siegel/ST11.pdf * This document provides recommendations for mathematics instruction strategies (based on TIMMS study).
http://jaymctighe.com You can find all of the books by Jay McTighe and links to his articles and blogs here. Links to his books (with photos and links to view/purchase) are under the “Books & DVDs” tab. For beginning educators I suggest Understanding by Design (ASCD, 2007), Essential Questions, (ASCD, 2013), and The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High Quality Units (ASCD, 2011).
http://www.teachthought.com/learning /the-simple-things-i-do-to-promote-brain-based-learning-in-my-classroom/ http://www.teachthought.com/learning/how-the-memory-works-in-learning/ Here you’ll find two articles by Judy Willis about brain-based learning.
http://www.edutopia.org/ Search for “Judy Willis” and you will find several of the author’s blogs, articles, and videos on various subjects related to topics discussed in this chapter.
Books Willis, J. (2007). Brain-friendly strategies for the inclusion classroom. ASCD.
Willis, J. (2006). Research-based strategies to ignite student learning: Insights from a neurolo- gist/classroom teacher. ASCD.
Willis, J. (2008). Inspiring middle school minds: Gifted, creative, and challenging. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potentials Press, Inc.
Questions for Review and Discussion 1. What is the difference between an implicit memory and an explicit memory? 2. Why is multisensory teaching and practice beneficial for successful memory
retrieval? 3. In what multisensory ways have you or could you teach a topic? 4. How can students mentally manipulate learning so neuroplasticity constructs the
neural connections of long-term memory?
*Link used by permission of Professor Alan Siegel.
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Summary and Resources
5. How will interference influence the ability to learn information? 6. Select a topic of instruction and propose ways to mentally manipulate new learning
with symbolizing, summarizing, and categorizing. 7. What are some of the concepts in a subject area of your choice that can be empha-
sized throughout different units in the curriculum? 8. How does this quote relate to having students transfer learning to new applications:
“The essence of wisdom is not in what we know, but in what we do with what we know”?
9. What strategies will you use to help students transfer their learning to new applications?
Key Terms explicit memory A type of memory that requires conscious recollection and includes memories for specific people, places, events, and facts. Also called declarative memory.
implicit memory A type of memory that does not require conscious recollection and includes memories for procedural knowl- edge and associative learning. Also called nondeclarative memory.
long-term potentiation (LTP) Increased synaptic firing in neurons after stimulation. The increased activity can last for days or even weeks. LTP plays a role in the consoli- dation of long-term memories.
positive transfer Facilitated learning of a new task after mastery of a related task.
primacy effect The cognitive theory claim- ing that we are particularly likely to remem- ber information that is presented first.
proactive interference Disruption of learning that occurs when old information interferes with the recall of new information.
recency effect The cognitive theory claim- ing that we are particularly likely to remem- ber information that is presented last.
retroactive interference Disruption of learning that occurs when new information interferes with the recall of old information.
serial position effect Humans’ psychologi- cal tendency to display better memory for information that we learn first and informa- tion that we learn last.
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