Encoding

Getting the information in our heads!!!!

How do you encode the info you read in our text?

Two ways to encode information

• Automatic Processing

• Effortful Processing

Automatic Processing

• Unconscious encoding of incidental information.• You encode space, time and word meaning

without effort.• Things can become automatic with practice.

For example, if I tell you that you are a jerk, you will encode the meaning of what I am saying to you without any effort.

Effortful Processing

• Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

• Rehearsal is the most common effortful processing technique.

• Through enough rehearsal, what was effortful becomes automatic.

Things to remember about Encoding

1. The next-In-Line effect: we seldom remember what the person has just said or done if we are next.

2. Information minutes before sleep is seldom remembered; in the hour before sleep, well remembered.

3. Taped info played while asleep is registered by ears, but we do not remember it.

Spacing Effect

• We encode better when we study or practice over time.

• DO NOT CRAM!!!!!

List the U.S. Presidents

Take out a piece of paper and….

The Presidents

Washington Taylor Harrison Eisenhower

J.Adams Fillmore Cleveland Kennedy

Jefferson Pierce McKinley L.Johnson

Madison Buchanan T.Roosevelt Nixon

Monroe Lincoln Taft Ford

JQ Adams A.Johnson Wilson Carter

Jackson Grant Harding Reagan

Van Buren Hayes Coolidge Bush

Harrison Garfield Hoover Clinton

Tyler Arthur FD.Roosevelt Bush Jr.

Polk Cleveland Truman Dean

Serial Positioning Effect

• Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

If we graph an average person remembers presidential list- it would probably look something like this.

PresidentsRecalled

Types of Encoding• Semantic Encoding: the

encoding of meaning, like the meaning of words

•Acoustic Encoding: the encoding of sound, especially the sounds of words.

•Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture images.

Encoding exercise

Which type works best?

Self-Reference Effect

• An example of how we encode meaning very well.

• The idea that we remember things (like adjectives) when they are used to describe ourselves.

Peg-word system

Tricks to Encode

• Use imagery: mental pictures

Mnemonic Devices use imagery. Like my “peg word” system or….

Links to examples of mnemonic devices.

"Mary Very Easily Makes Jam Saturday Unless No Plums."

Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

Give me some more examples….

Chunking

• Organizing items into familiar, manageable units.

• Often it will occur automatically.

Chunk- from Goonies

1-4-9-2-1-7-7-6-1-8-1-2-1-9-4-1

Do these numbers mean anything to you?

1492, 1776, 1812, 1941 how about now?

Chunking1,3 and 5 make little sense to us. But when we chunk the characters differently (2,4,6) they become easy to remember.