Organizing and Learning

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Organizing and Learning

• Dress shirts go on blue hangers and casual shirts
  go on hanger with red tag.
• Left side of the closet is for winter and right
  side is for summer.
• No exceptions!!

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Question

• Why do we organize things?
• Organized info seems to be easier to remember
• Example - 3 lists of words (high, low, and no
  association)
• Recall will be good for highly associated words
  and poor for words not associated

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Levels of Organization

• Organization that exists in LTM
• Perceptual organization
• The linking of perceived information to
  information already stored in LTM

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Organization in LTM

• In memory we have categories of information (i.e.
  kinds of people, kinds of food, kinds of music)
• Categories share certain characteristics (a
  number of different storage theories)
• Organization patterns in the brain do not seem to
  be category specific

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Example of the Waiter

• Remembering food orders involve memory for
  individuals and preparation
• Waiters use a number of strategies to remember
  orders
• Have found that these strategies are not
  dependent on food information but may be used
  with any information (i.e. food names were
  replaced with items from other categories,
  animals, flowers)

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Instruction

• What happens if someone gives you to organization
  strategy?
• Two possibilities
• Their strategy will work (makes sense to you)
• Their strategy doesnt work (doesnt make sense
  to you)
• Thus, organization is dependent on prior
  knowledge

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Perceptual Organization

• Bases for Gestalt theorists
• Individuals will spontaneously impose their own
  order on things
• Order can be visual, spatial, verbal, semantic,
  or a combination of these

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Gestalt Assumptions

• Assumptions
• We respond to segregated sensory wholes rather
  than isolated events
• Geographic environment differs from perceived
  environment

• Examples
• A cross is seen as two lines instead of two right
  angles
• A man rides across snow covered plain to an inn.
  When he finds out the plain was thin ice he died
  of shock

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Gestalt Laws

• Law of Präganz - of several geometrically
  possible organizations, we will perceive the one
  that is the most efficient, economical, simple,
  or stable
• This law is a general principle that encompasses
  all other Gestalt laws

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Other Laws
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Linking

• Perceptual organized information is linked with
  information already stored in LTM
• Linking is associated with mnemonics
• Mnemonics can involve elaboration (link with a
  memory in an expanded way) or reduction (link in
  memory in a condensed way)

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Internal Vs. External

• Aids or cues that help organize information can
  either be internal or external
• Internal aids include such things as mnemonics
• External aids include such things as Post-it
  notes

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Why Organize?

• Hatfield (1985) proposed that simpler
  representations require fewer cognitive resources
• Is organization innate?
• Some would say yes and others would say that
  prior knowledge is important part of our
  interpretations

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Remembering Skills

• 1. Material is encoded meaningfully using
  pre-existing knowledge
• 2. The process involves attaching retrieval cues
  to some specified structure built on existing
  knowledge
• 3. The process becomes faster with increasing
  practice