Cognitive Psychology in Education
By Isabella Carbajal
For first-year college students, the transition from high school to college can be challenging, especially when the ways of studying and learning begin to change. Luckily, there are beneficial ways of improving and overcoming these challenges if we understand the concept of load theory of attention. Do not fear, it is not as complicated as it may seem, and will change the way you think about studying!
By Will Godinez
The use of Dual Coding in essence is using imagery and labeling it with a word which in turn helps you remember the word or the image one sees for the first time, and it should turn into a long-term memory. But how can we use dual coding in our freshman year in college, well depending where you go you may end up taking a class of learning a new language for extracurricular, something fun you may have a trip in mind to go to and you want to learn the language before you head out to that specific country in case the locals or the signs don’t have the language you speak. Would be awful if you get stranded in a country without knowing the language, and what would you do if your phone dies google translate won’t be translating nothing if you can’t speak at least a broken version of the country’s native language. But how does this correlate with learning a language in class or even on your own time.
Continue reading “Dual Coding for Learning new Language”By Sarah Kimbro
For memories, learning how to process and organize them is great for when we want to do well at work, at school, or even with relationships. When it comes to processing your memories, it starts with your working memory, and depending on how you memorize and use your working memory affects what then becomes stored. To completely utilize the working memory, you have to use it to its full capacity, which also includes using the best method to encode the things in working memory so that they are able to be processed into your long-term memory store. One of the best methods to use is chunking, where you ‘chunk’ the things that are similar that you want to remember together. There are about four chunks that can go into working memory before you start to forget things (1) and so then comes the encoding to process those memories from working memory into your long-term memory.
Continue reading “Have trouble remembering? Maybe it’s in the way you process!”By Claire Schaffner
Introduction
Hey, there! If you’re reading this, then you are probably a first-year college student overwhelmed during syllabus week and thinking: “There is no chance I survive freshman year.” You’re thinking back to high school and reminiscing on how easy your classes were and how you spent nights before tests (when they were still called tests, and not “exams,” which is somehow much more intimidating), which you spent playing Fortnite, not cramming a semester’s worth of content in preparation for a final. Your high school teachers, parents, freshman orientation leader, and probably your TikTok “For You Page” have all most likely thrown a lot of studying hacks and advice at you, but you may still feel unprepared for the courseload you’re taking on, and unsure of how you’re going to balance 16 credit hours, Greek life, homesickness, and a social life. Do not fear! Here is a quick and simple guide on how to understand use the psychological concept of encoding to get the most out of your studying. Happy reading! Good luck with your freshman year!
Continue reading “Cracking the (En)Code”By Makayla Rosenbery
Survival value (also known as adaptive value and connection to survival processing) is understanding memory and how memory is used to survive which leads to survival processing that encodes items into our memory(1)! Survival value leads to enhanced memory by relating words to situations that others have not experienced (the apocalypse!!!) This works because when we relate words to our survival, we are linking to something meaningful that will stick in our minds(2). In cognitive psychology, survival value refers to the adaptive benefit of certain cognitive processes or behaviors that assist one’s survival.
Continue reading “Survival of the Studious”By Garrett Spahn
A lot of kids will struggle with studying when they first start college. Some kids may have gotten by with their study habits in high school but most of the time, these study habits don’t quite help anyone in college. College is so much different in that there aren’t many small assignments that help you to make sure you understand the material like there were in high school. There are lectures, quizzes, participation, papers, presentations, and exams and that’s pretty much it when it comes to grades in college. For me, I tried to take on high school by myself whenever I could but that will not go will with you for college. I highly encourage any freshmen coming in to immediately start going to some study groups or just collaborating with at least one person that you can count on.
By Ellory Wahlfeld
Are you cramming for exams? Do you drown in flashcards? There’s a science-backed lifeline that could change the way you hit the books. It’s called maintenance rehearsal, not your average study hack. It’s a brain-tuning, memory-maxing method that could turn your study woes into wins.
Continue reading “Study Like a Rockstar: Mastering Maintenance Rehearsal for Academic Success”By Jonah Lauff
Overview of Concrete Examples/Thinking
Did you know concrete examples and concrete thinking are used throughout everyday life? Concrete examples are defined as real-world, or illustrative, examples of an abstract or declarative concept (Rawson et al. 2015) (1). Concrete thinking is a very specific way of thinking. People from all ages use concrete thinking. From early childhood, concrete thinking is developed from when you are a baby until you are about the age of 7 (2). During the early years of school, specifically the ages from 7 to 12, concrete thinking is a major part of the way kids think when it comes to school at these ages (2). From age 12 until adolescence, kids begin to analyze, generalize, extrapolate, and empathize more (2). Lastly, from adolescence until adulthood, people are experienced when it comes to concrete thinking. People begin to use concrete thinking in their personal experiences and observations that will eventually lead to a solution about things that go on in their life and pertaining to school and work (2). When applying concrete examples and concrete thinking to studying, this makes people study more specific and to the point and apply examples to the concept that happens when studying for a class. Let’s use a concrete example in mathematics. For example, if you have six bananas and take two, you have taken one-third or 33.33% of the bananas. This takes a generalized problem and by someone using a concrete example, in this example it being bananas, and this helps them with remembering a simple math problem. Concrete examples and thinking are a good way for young incoming students in college to take an abstract concept that they may or may not know and apply it to a real-world, illustrative example that helps them better understand the course material.
Continue reading “Let’s Just Be Concrete!”By Lydia Clark
Introduction
Have you ever sat down to do homework, study, or to focus on a topic and realized that it is difficult to ignore distractions around you? Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to filter out distractions, even though you desire to be productive? At several points in a student’s academic career, most people often struggle with truly remaining focused while doing schoolwork and other important tasks. There can be many aspects of why a student cannot stay focused, especially if they are preoccupied with other events in their life.
What is Selective Attention?
One main reason that students can become so easily distracted is that selective attention is an obstacle that every student faces. Selective Attention is the process of having an ability to focus on a particular subject in their direct environment for a specific amount of time. For a student to be truly productive with their work, they must put in effort with this process and actively ignore all other distractions around their working environment. For this process to be a success, a person must be selective in their own attention and realize what they must drown out in the background. For a lot of young people, it can be a challenging task to drown out distractions such as their phones or other technology that is not helpful to be used in the moment.
By Haley Cutting
Introduction
Trying to learn new information while having to remember old information is hard, especially the thought of coming in as a first-year college student. The thought of trying to learn multiple classes and courses at once at a high level can be stressful, especially coming out of high school. The class schedule in college is confusing within itself. Trying to figure out how you will study for your psychology of learning exam on Monday and your cognitive psychology exam, also on Monday. When you go in to take your cognitive psychology exam, you completely forget everything you studied from earlier chapters, but can only remember everything from recent chapters. This is what is called retroactive interference (RI). This process occurs when learning a new task that then impairs the previously learned task (1). As you continue throughout the exam, you remember stuff from chapters from the start of the year. As you start remembering those earlier chapters, you cannot seem to remember anything from the chapters you just learned! This is what is called proactive interference (PI). This process occurs when the old task you learned impairs the ability to learn or remember the new task (1). There are some ways to stop these interferences from occurring for you little newcomers. To stop these from happening you need to fully understand which interference is which and what they fully mean. Here is a little acronym trick for you, Proactive = Old, Retroactive = New (“P.O.R.N”).
Continue reading “Conquer Your Mind: Understanding Interference in Learning “