Tag: encoding

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Cracking the (En)Code

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!

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How to Pass College While Saving your Sanity

By Alexis Charlton

To all college students, especially freshmen, are you tired of blanking on tests? Are you tired of studying for hours and not remembering your content? I have something to tell you, it’s not how long or how hard you study, it is how you study. How would it feel to show up to a test and feel more confident than ever? How would you feel about sleeping peacefully the night before a test? I can give you the answer on how to feel confident and calm before you show up to a test. Once again, it is not about how long you study, it is all about how you encode the information you study. 

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PORN! And how it can affect your GPA

By Emmalyn Paul

Introduction

It’s the moment of truth. You’re sitting in your seat, ready to open the test booklet for your first COLLEGE final exam. You’re sweating, breathing heavy, the end is NEARLY in sight. You hear “All I Want For Christmas is You” playing in the back of your mind as you take the FINAL leap before Christmas. You open the book and stress overwhelms you. You can’t seem to remember ANY of the questions on the first two pages. All you can remember is the information from the chapter you JUST finished last week. This, my friend, is the perfect example of retroactive interference (RI). This occurs when new information that you have recently learned makes it difficult to recall old information you have learned (1). Somehow you manage to push your way through. As you move from question to question the information starts to come back to you. You begin to remember all you studied from those first few chapters…so much so that when you get to the end of your test booklet, you find yourself having a difficult time recalling the chapters you just learned last week! WHAT?! How could this be possible?? Well, it is, and it’s a process that is called proactive interference (PI). This occurs when old information you have learned gives you difficulty remembering new information you have learned (1). In order to find ways to combat these interferences, you must first fully understand them and, most importantly, remember which is which. Well, all you little freshies with your mind in the gutter are in luck, because have I got an acronym for you! When in doubt, just think “PORN”: Proactive=Old, Retroactive=New. Continue reading “PORN! And how it can affect your GPA”

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What Does That Mean?!

By Drew Carter

In the field of psychology, there are multiple ways to encode something into long term-memory. While the process of committing information from stimuli to memory is important, what is arguably more important is what types of information causes individuals to be more attentive. To go a step further, what is also of interest is how the meaning of the stimulus can affect the difficulty of committing that stimulus to long-term memory. This pertains to the Levels of Processing Theory. However, before we get to discussing how the levels of processing affects us, I would like to take a moment to explain encoding, as it is crucial to this whole topic.

Encoding is the process of converting stimuli, whether it be visual (light stimuli, perceived by the eyes), acoustic (sound stimuli, perceived by the ears), or semantic (sensory stimuli that has a particular meaning to the individual) stimuli, into memory1. When the different senses, for the different types of stimuli, are activated, neurons in the brain fire to the area of the brain that recognizes the information. For instance, if the eyes perceive that light is reflecting a face, different areas of the brain will be activated then if you saw a pretty sunset2. While this description may not be incredibly enlightening, you just need to understand the basics, so we can move on to how the meanings of words can affect your ability to encode them to memory. Continue reading “What Does That Mean?!”

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It’s Not a Generation Thing: The Generation Effect

By Sydni Neal

The Generation Effect

For individuals wishing to improve their grades on tests and quizzes, the generation effect may come in handy. The generation effect, an effective memory strategy which allows an individual to remember information better, is rather simple to take advantage of. The generation effect is simply the act of creating, or generating, information and materials that an individual needs to remember in order to enhance the process of encoding within the memory. However, according to research, the effectiveness and usefulness of the generation effect is different depending on the situation, but, as a whole, is an effect study method.

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Make It About YOU: Learning with the Self-Reference Effect

By Marissa Wurster & Daniel Ilagan

You know how you’re mom told you while you were growing up to stop being selfish and stop making things all about you? Well we’re here to tell you to forget that! In terms of improving memory and encoding items, relating things back to yourself can actually be really helpful! Students spend hours every single day trying to comprehend new material, but often times they waste that time because they fail to relate the material to themselves. Evaluating incoming information relative to the contents of one’s self schema can lead to enhanced elaboration and organization of the newly learned material (1).

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What a Cue Can Do For You

By David Peoples and Madeline Voelker 

Welcome to your first year of college. If you are like me, you are probably wondering how in the world you are going to remember everything you need to know for exams, quizzes, and assignments. Well, the first thing you should know is that remembering is actually a complicated process of re-accessing information that has been stored in your brain. (1) When your brain recalls information it is reconstructing the event by drawing various elements together from different parts of your brain to effectively re-experience the neural activity generated in response to the situation you experienced. (1) Thus, in a sense, your brain is neurally reliving the experience. (1) This probably sounds very technical and complicated. But that is where cued recall comes in to save the day. Cued recall is exactly what the name implies: recollection that is cued. But what does that mean? Put simply, a cue is something that both triggers and assists in the recollection of a memory. (1) But what constitutes a cue? And how can they help in college? Well, anything can be a cue, but we are focusing on those that are directly applicable to your college experience. Therefore, the cues we are focusing on are: taste, location, sound, and written. Continue reading “What a Cue Can Do For You”

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Don’t Ignore the Voices: They Could Be Helpful *insert suspenseful music*

By Joseph Contezac and Darlene Valdez

If you go in any coffee shop or public place on a college campus other than the library, you will see students studying and chatting with their friends. But is chatting while you study preventing you from remembering key info on that test you are studying for? Though studying with a partner has been shown to actually help with remembering information, simply chatting about everyday things while you study is a distraction that is anything, but helpful to your academic success. Due to the amount of media we consume and how readily available it is, millennials have adopted “strategies” for multitasking. Millennials in general, are all about multitasking, especially when the amount of work you have is not equal to the amount of time you have to do it. Focusing more on chatting and studying, it is important to note the reasons why this might be affecting your ability to remember key material. It all comes down to the concepts of divided attention, and the distinction between on-topic and off-topic conversation.

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Why You Should Forget Everything You Learned About Studying

By Henry Schimmel and Brennan McGuire

Deep-rooted high school study habits tend to die hard in college if they are not swiftly corrected. One of the greatest challenges new college students face is abandoning their traditional methods of rereading and memorizing class material when preparing for an exam. While these study techniques may have yielded positive results in the high school classroom, they simply won’t suffice in the rigorous domain of higher education. However, it is never too late to change your study habits. You might be pleasantly surprised by the extent to which changing your study routine can improve your academic performance and overall retention of information. While it can be a daunting and arduous task to modify your existing study paradigm, by utilizing the simple method of retrieval practice, you can significantly improve long-term understanding and performance.

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Professors Hate This Study Method: How Wearing a Zumba Suit and Binging On Kahlúa Improved Exam Scores

By Christopher Forte and Shantell Brusse

So your class has just taken a difficult calculus exam. Amongst the crowd of people leaving the classroom are expressions of relief, profound joy and confidence. There is a light at the end of everyone’s tunnel, except for you. You stagger outside the classroom in complete astonishment, run into Walgreens to buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s half-baked cookie dough paradise and proceed to crawl in bed to withdraw from such a cruel world.

The following week is spent in wallowing as the inevitable test grade is posted onto D2L and your dreams of leading an armada of food trucks are foolishly, however temporarily, put into question. Assuming that there are no perfect people on Earth, such a failure may lead to a short-lived, higher ingestion of alcohol. More days pass and you break out of your drunken spree only to realize that it is the day of the next calculus exam. A short review of the notes and you find yourself sitting in the same classroom where the exam review took place several days before. Still slightly inebriated, the exam is completed and turned back to the TA. The surprise of your life is posted on D2L as you score higher than you ever have before in the class.

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