Tag: cognitive psychology

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The Psychological Version of a Web Diagram

By Kelton O’Grady

“School.”

Your brain has just been primed. Before you even finished reading the word above, you had many things popping into your head. Mental images such as a building, teachers, homework, or even a classroom. (1). The effects on priming are predicted only when assuming that the typical time of activation-spread is in the order of hundreds of milliseconds. Let’s take a second and reflect on how your mind created these images, maybe a web diagram, (like you were taught at a young age to use for essays) connecting all similar ideas once you saw the word. This is one idea I wish I would have used more often my freshman year of college to better understand a wider variety of information and how they connect to many other things in life in different ways. 

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Have A Large Load of Information to Remember? Here Are Some Tips

By Sophia Simonis

Do you often have trouble studying for exams? Does it seem like even though you put in countless hours studying that you can never remember what you need to when it comes time to sit down and actually take a test? You may be studying wrong.

THE LOAD THEORY OF ATTENTION

The load theory of attention explains how people can focus on a certain task while ignoring irrelevant stimuli. This theory includes two concepts, processing capacity and perceptual load. Processing capacity refers to the limited amount of information a person can focus on at one time. Your working memory can only handle so much at a time and still successfully carry out a task. Perceptual load refers to the amount of information a particular task involves. A high-load task, involving a large amount of information, will fill up your entire processing capacity. A low-load task, dealing with a small amount of information, will only take up a small portion of the processing capacity (1). In other words, a difficult task will require all of your attention to perform, while an easier task leaves room for distractions to take over your attention.

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Work Smart. Not Hard

By Randilyn Light-Smith

We all stress about having a big final, quiz, or even a test coming up. This could have even started at a young age of stressing about one coming up. Coming up with many ways on how to prepare and study for one of these was always a big help. One of the main ways was repeating something over and over again. This can be done by saying it out loud or rereading the material you were given over and over again. Why is doing something over and over again a big way that helps you remember the material you learned?

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Beyond The Basics

By Jayden Minton

From a young age we are conditioned to learn new information in creative ways. As we grow older we slowly start to fade and grow out of the ways in which we were taught would help us. The most important information is taught to us while we are young so that we know the basics to build off of for newer and more complex information. Learning information in creative ways that are out of the ordinary tend to stick with us. Why does this not appear more in high school and college?

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Let’s Learn Some Vocab

By Olivia Falls

If you have ever taken any anatomy, psychology, or physics classes, you know the importance of learning and memorizing vocabulary words. Now I know that there are other classes that you can think of where vocabulary was also important, but in my opinion, these were the biggest ones. In these three classes every vocabulary word was important and came back up later in the class. All classes have vocabulary words that you should learn for a test, but with most you can get away with doing a quick review right before the test without actually knowing the words. But, for those classes in which each vocabulary word is needed and necessary to understand the future material, a new strategy is needed. What’s the new strategy? So glad you asked! Using a technique called paired-associate learning, you will be better able to learn and recall the meanings of your vocabulary words. The technique that I am going to talk about might be one that you already use, but simply did not know what it was called. But, regardless of if you have already been using this technique or are just now learning about it, this blog will be helpful in improving your ability to recall information.

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Do You Want to Pass your Next Test?

By Haley Haggard

Have you ever failed a test before even though you studied for hours on end? Let me guess how you studied, you copied down what was on the power-point word for word and thought “well that should be enough!”. Well, you were wrong. When you are frantically trying to keep up with the professor and copying down word for word from the PowerPoint you are not processing what is being said because you are processing on a shallow level. This is where the level of processing theory comes in, it is going to help you process information at a deeper level to help you remember what is going on in class. I am going to teach you about the level of processing theory and how you can use it to your advantage when studying for your next test.

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Dual-Task Methodology

By KayeLynn Brown

As college students have you ever really thought of the most productive vs least productive ways to study and retain information? Trust me, we’re all in the same boat in one way or another. While adjusting to the college workload it can be stressful to find what works for you. What is important to note is trying to do several tasks at once is harmful to a student’s ability to learn and study information. If there’s one thing I would’ve liked to been told when I was an incoming freshman trying to learn all of this for myself – it would’ve been the greater amount or load of things you put on yourself and try to learn, will actually just hinder your ability to succeed. Dual-task methodology can help explain the reasoning behind this.

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Started from the Bottom Now We’re Here

By Kayla Enochs

            Studying has been something that a lot of students struggle with. Finding the perfect method is way more difficult than it should be. Every person is unique and not everyone can study the exact same way. So, this blog post is dedicated to giving students another studying style that they can try to their utility belt. In this blog, students will be able to learn about what the bottom-up and top-down processes are and how they can be used to study.

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Similar Problems Have Similar Solutions

By Alexander Brittain

College students have a huge responsibility in their first year of college. They are expected to achieve academic goals that they set prior to starting the school year. There are many cognitive psychology strategies that can be used to exel in the classroom. By using these strategies you will utilize your time studying and learning in the classes you take. The strategy that I am going to talk about is how to solve problems using analogies. Analogies are used to reach a goal by utilizing past information. Analogies play a key role in problem-solving, decision-making, perception, and more.

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