Y163 Tma1

To start with we should ask the question, what is thinking? A simple way of answering this is that thinking is an active process by which our brains perceive information to from opinions and judgements, which can be done in words (known as semantic thought), pictures (iconic thoughts), enactive thoughts (thinking based on physical actions) and feelings.

However, at some point our thinking will be stored as a ‘memory’, the ability to store information such as that we have thought off. We can recall memories using the same methods that we use whilst thinking. Memories are important as they form part of our identity, and hold our experiences and how we view the world. Without this, we lose our identity and being. For the purposes of this essay we shall look at mental images, concepts and schemas.

Mental images are a way of organising thinking and memory by making pictures in your mind, describing the word/thing that is to be remembered. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and a good example of this is illustrated in the Psychology Y163 course book, which is useful when trying to learn a foreign language. There is a picture of a person lifting a lid off a bin that turned into a bell and which has an unpleasant smell because of some ‘poo’. This can help us remember the word ‘poubelle’ which means ‘bin’ in French.

Another example demonstrated in the Y163 course book is the experiment conducted by Raugh and Atkinson, where a group of people were given a list of Spanish words to learn in Spanish (Raugh and Atkinson) of the people in this group were given help with remembering words by means of mental images whereas others were not. Those in the group that were given the extra help remembered more words than the others, which again demonstrates that this technique (key word technique) can help a person remember things better.  

Another technique that can help us with our thinking/memory is the use of concepts. Concepts can best be described as...