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After reading this article you will learn about the applications of memory research.
The integrated processes of memory, remembering and forgetting have become one of the major areas of cognitive psychology. Ever since scientists equated human memory with the computer memory it has received and is receiving both healthy and hostile attention from laymen and scientists.
Memory research and its application is a recent achievement of this type of enquiry. It is said that most of the psychological studies in the twentieth century are dominated by cognitive psychology and memory research goes to make a lion’s share of it.
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Now let us see where exactly the research findings of memory have been put to practical application. After becoming familiar with learning and intelligence, one can say unhesitatingly that it has a direct bearing on these two processes. Learning precedes memory and is always accompanied by intelligence. However, a good memory is always an asset to both learning and intelligence though a view has been held that the relationship between memory and intelligence is low.
We are aware that intelligence tests, in general, are techniques employed for measuring the efficacy of a person’s intellectual abilities. They provide information about the person as a whole, on the one hand, and how good one is at various skills on the other. Apart from this, they also help us to assess one’s general mental functioning and any impairment therein, for one reason or the other.
Such measurements are made possible by employing various methods of retention like recall, recognition, information processing methods such as short-term and long- term memories, semantic memory and so on. All this is viewed by scientists working in this area in terms of components of a single system called the information processing system.
These components, after identification and analysis, still remain as theoretical concepts. Today the psychologists testing the cognitive processes of a gifted, retarded or mentally deranged person, discuss the outcome in terms of rate of remembering, rate of forgetting, capacity, span, etc. with a possible quantitative value assigned to each, and even use the term Memory- Quotient or MQ.
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These values are assigned or measured through various models and paradigms which are evolved along with the construction of the models. For example, the Tulving memory span procedure measures a person’s capacity to store (span of memory).
This model allows us to specify how efficient a person is at encoding material for subsequent retrieval. The Collins and Quillian’s model measures how fast semantic memory can be retrieved. The Smith and Shoben model shows how memory gets organised and the Brown Peterson paradigm measures the capacity of short-term storage.
The experiments of Hebb, Hellyer and Runders provide an indication of how much information can be transferred to long-term store via rote rehearsal. In general, it is easy using these models and paradigms to detect at what point the subject’s information processing system encounters difficulties.
Does the problem lie in extremely rapid forgetting from short-term store? Or is it an inability to transfer information to long-term store? If so, what type of rehearsal strategy and what type of transferring strategy has to be used? It was found that when mentally retarded people were taught these strategies, their performance improved.
These results were like a breath of fresh air because they suggest that at least in some cases, the deficiencies of such people do not involve the hardware (sense organs, structure of nerves, brain, etc.) of human information processing system, and that deficiencies involved are those in learning strategies which, to some extent, can be overcome.
Theories regarding memory are found to be very useful in education, especially the systems which are employing computers. Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) programmes are used extensively in some of the western countries with the intention of optimizing the learning processes.
From the semantic memory models, one can see how the emphasis on memory is shifted from factual information to how the semantic material gets organised, how the relationships get established, what exactly is the course of retrieval processes and so on.
This technique of Computer Assisted Teaching (CAT) departs completely from the traditional notion of testing only factual information. Unlike the traditional educational system, the student of the CAT system is supposed to learn more than facts with the help of well-mentioned instructions, feedback devices and special methods devised to assess the degree of learning.
Today, the method employed to assess learning is recognition or relearning rather than recall. This methods is employed because it is found to be simple, can measure more information, consumes less time and is less strenuous to the subject as well as the person or computer taking the measurement. Eventually the whole programme makes the human being and the computer so compatible that they make a perfect team leading to maximum efficiency in learning and, in turn, to memory.
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Human engineering is a branch of technology that is concerned with the application of theoretical and experimental psychology to man-machine systems. One can imagine the role played by man-machine memory in this technology. For example, computers, calculators, automobiles, aircrafts, spacecraft’s, submarines, etc. are devised to maximise speed and efficiency and minimise errors.
This is achieved through cooperation among the concerned operators whose job is to remember with ease what he or she is supposed to be doing with all the dials and switches in front of them. For instance, in aviation and navigation, pilots and captains have to perform various tasks at the same time like giving instructions, operating controls and following complicated instructions from the ground.
It was, therefore, felt that such conditions should be designed keeping in mind the human information processing system and this has been successfully achieved to a great extent. For instance, research in this area suggested that aircraft instruments may be conceptually grouped into a hierarchical structure of categories and subcategories.
For example, there are instruments involving aircraft orientation, navigation, and state of the engine and so on. Researches, especially on category clustering and organisation, have shown that information corresponding to a large number of items in the case of aircraft instruments is more easily acquired and also more resistant to forgetting if the information is initially organised in some coherent manner by grouping them into inherent hierarchical structures.
Thus, navigation instruments form one cluster and engine instruments another cluster. Among the navigation instruments, radio navigation instruments form one sub- cluster. Similarly, within the engine instrument cluster, temperature instruments form one sub-cluster. Thus, the pilot scanning the panel can make use of the inherent organisation of the information he is trying to acquire and remember.
Communication is another area which has turned memory research to advantage. Some of the prerequisites of good communication are clarity and simplicity. This is said to be achieved through special designs suggested by memory research such as coding, decoding, cueing, categorizing and other mnemonic devices.
The aim here is that when applied under appropriate circumstances, these devices facilitate precise and smooth communication. Communication experts today are conducting various training and teaching programmes regarding the planning and application of the right strategies for effective communication which necessarily involves memory both short-term and long-term.
One area where memory research legitimately belongs to is law. This is one profession which relies totally on the past or in other words indirectly on memory. All the proceedings whether criminal or non-criminal start only after the events have taken place, thus, making the involvement of memory and the methods of retention inevitable.
In any trial, the lawyer who is interrogating the person in the witness box is all the while trying to make him recall or recognise something connected (unconnected) with the incident. Fortunately or unfortunately our courts place a good deal of importance on the testimony of eye witnesses or observers of a crime or an incident, and it is they who have to adapt memory research to their advantage. It is worth mentioning here, Hugo Munterberg’s statement which attacked the legal profession in his book entitled “On the Witness Stand”.
It seems indeed astonishing that the work of justice is ever carried out in the courts without ever consulting the psychologist and asking him for all the aid which the modern study of suggestion can offer.
The lawyer and the judge … are sure that they do not need the experimental psychologist … They go on thinking that their instinct and their common sense supplies them with all that is needed and somewhat more …. My only purpose is to turn the attention of serious men to an absurdly neglected field.
This triggered a great awareness of psychology in the field of law and resulted in a realisation of the importance of studies conducted on the ability of people to testify about a movie which they have witnessed. The results of such studies showed that a good part of such testimony is inaccurate and becomes increasingly so with the lapse of time.
Some of the inaccuracies are due to faulty observation, but many are due to the distortions which occur in memory. It would be redundant to explain how and why such inaccuracies arise as the reader has already been familiarized with these.
Finally, we see that remembering is no more an isolated process in the individual and no more an isolated theoretical concept in psychological literature. It is the counterpart of forgetting and is directly related to intelligence, learning, attention, etc. Memory processes have grown to be one of the significant and major areas of behavioural study and technology.
Our discussions, it is hoped would have provided the reader with sufficient understanding to recognise the complexity of the process of remembering and also the causal factors related to inadequate or defective remembering.
Further, the reader would also be in a position to appreciate the very close relationship between remembering and other cognitive processes like perceiving, learning and thinking, each of which influences the other.
If we considered remembering or, for that matter, any of the above mentioned processes independently, it was largely for reasons of conceptual clarity and simplicity of presentation. The reader might have often come across terms like memory training, how to improve remembering, etc.
In all these instances, it will be found that what is trained or improved is not just memory or remembering but the whole process of cognitive response. The best way to remember effectively still appears to be efficient learning and vice versa.