Social Sciences

Task 1
How can the way in which we organise our thinking by using mental images, concepts and schemas improve our memory?
Part A
Mental Images
 Remembering information better if we form a mental image of it

 Work best if they are not consistent to our normal memory traits

 Using a key word to activate an image of your own making

 Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson’s (1975) experiment (page 37)

Concepts
 Making a mental representation of a group of objects or events that share similar properties (page 40)

 Over generalisation of   concept
Schemas
 A mental framework of knowledge developed as a result of experience (page 43)

 Applying previous knowledge to a relevantly new situation

 Negative side of forming a schema

 References!

Use personal experiences!!

Part B

On an all too regular basis our memory lets us down; this can range from everyday things such as pin codes for our cash cards, where we parked our car to memory of relatives’ birthdays or other important events in our social calendars that should never be forgotten about!  

Many psychologists have spent time to look into this and they have come up with different concepts on ways of organising our thinking to make our task recalling events easier.   The three ways are Mental Images, Concepts and Schemas.   I am going to look into these three ways before mentioned and give some explanation on these and give examples of how these can improve our memory.

A Mental Image is forming an image in our memory that will help us remember facts and / or details more accurately than just remembering the fact itself.   This method of improving our memory works best if we form an image that is not consistent with our everyday thoughts so that it will stick better in our memory, if images are large, colourful and bizarre it works best as we tend to remember distinctive items rather than everyday items .   Michael Raugh and Richard Atkinson’s experiment (1975) demonstrates...