Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Marco Polo, the Portuguese explorers, and Columbus. Several strategies exist that
promote meaningful encoding, and we examine four of them in this section. They
are
•
imagery
•
organization
•
schema activation
•
elaboration
The strategies are outlined in Fig. 5.7 and discussed in the sections that follow.
MAKING INFORMATION MEANINGFUL
IMAGERY
Form mental
pictures of topics
ORGANIZATION
Impose order and
connections in
new information
SCHEMA
ACTIVATION
Activate relevant
prior knowledge
ELABORATION
Expand on
existing schemas
Fig. 5.7
Strategies for promoting meaningful encoding
Imagery
Imagery
is the process of forming mental pictures of an idea (Schwartz & Heiser,
2006), and its value as an encoding strategy is supported by
dual-coding theory
,
which suggests that long-term memory contains two distinct memory systems:
one for verbal information and one for images (Paivio 1991; Sadoski & Paivio,
2001). According to dual-coding theory, ideas that can be represented both visu-
ally and verbally, such as
ball
,
house
,or
dog
, are easier to remember than ideas
that are more difficult
to visualize, such as
value
,
truth
, and
ability
(Paivio,
1986).
As we study human memory, for example, the fact that we can both visualize the
models in Figs. 5.1 and 5.6 and read about the information in them helps us capi-
talize on the dual-coding capability of long-term memory. Information in the model
becomes more meaningfully encoded than it would be if we had only described
it verbally (Clark & Paivio, 1991; Willoughby, Porter, Belsito, & Yearsley, 1999).
Dual-coding theory again reminds us of the importance of supplementing verbal
information with visual representations (Igo, Kiewra, & Bruning, 2004). This capi-
talizes on both distributed processing in working memory and the dual-coding
capability of long-term memory.
Imagery can be particularly helpful in problem solving (Kozhevnikov, Hegarty, &
Mayer, 1999). It would have been harder for you to solve the area-of-the-pentagon
problem, for example, if you had not been given the drawing as an aid.
