What is encoding?

Introduction

Most people find it easy to remember certain events from the past, such as the best vacation they ever had. They would remember their age and the most interesting things they saw or did at that time, even if the events occurred years before. If people could not remember events in their lives, they would have no personal history, skills, or talents. Fortunately, humans are able to take information from the world and store it in a mental representation that allows them to use that past information in a current situation. This ability is a function of the way the human memory
system works.

The memory system records events as they occur; this process is called encoding. The information is stored in a memory trace until it is needed. A memory trace remains in storage until a cue (a specific clue that triggers a memory) for that memory occurs, at which time the memory will be retrieved from long-term storage and outputted for use.

Short-Term and Long-Term Memory

In the model that is often used to illustrate memory systems, information comes into the memory system and is then transported to short-term memory (STM), where it is held for both further encoding into, and interaction with, long-term memory (LTM). There are different encoding strategies for information, depending on whether it is to be used by STM or LTM. Some encoding strategies are unintentional, but others can be used purposefully to increase memory abilities.

One of the characteristics of STM is that it can only store five to nine items, and these items remain in STM for only about eighteen seconds. Thus, information processed in STM must either be encoded into LTM or be lost from the system. If, for example, one needs the information of a telephone number, one probably will repeat the number until one can dial. This is known as a rehearsal strategy, and it serves to make the information available until one uses it.

One way of overcoming the capacity limitations of STM is by an encoding strategy called chunking: A group of items are chunked into meaningful units, which allows STM to hold more information and to be aided by LTM. For example, if one were asked to remember the letters FCTIIIBWAABM by rehearsing the letters, one would not easily remember the sequence. If, however, one were asked to remember the same letters arranged as FBI CIA TWA IBM, one would have no trouble recalling the sequence. The letters are chunked into four meaningful units that are small enough for STM and can be encoded into LTM because of their meaningfulness.

Another encoding strategy is the use of imagery. To remember a list of items, one makes a visual image of the items. For example, if one is to remember the pair of words dog and ribbon, one might make an image of the dog with a big red ribbon on its tail. Imagery is similar to another encoding strategy called elaboration. This, like imagery, adds details to an event and gives it more meaning so that it is more easily remembered. For example, given directions to a concert, one might start thinking about the time one walked down Main Street. By adding these details, one elaborates on the event and increases one’s memory. Elaboration is something that people do automatically, because memory is organized so that one event triggers memories of other events. If one hears the word dog, one automatically begins to retrieve things that one knows about dogs.

Another encoding strategy is called organization. This process groups items into larger categories of relatedness. For example, given a list of words to remember, such as dog, knife, rose, cat, horse, fork, daisy, spoon, and pansy, one would likely remember the words in three categories: flowers, utensils, and animals. This could be an intentional encoding strategy, and it aids memory because the retrieval (the process of getting information from the memory system) of the larger category also activates all the members of that category that are associated with it.

Associated Cues

The theory proposed by Endel Tulving called encoding specificity contradicts organizational encoding. Tulving proposes that any cue present and specifically encoded at the time of study will serve as an effective cue for retrieval, even over cues that would seem to be more likely to trigger the memory. For example, in 1971 Tulving and D. M. Thompson gave subjects a list of word pairs to remember. One group was given a list of word pairs that were strong associates of each other, such as hot-cold. The other list had words that were weakly associated with each other, such as blow-cold. Later, at a test session, the first word was given as a cue, and subjects were asked to fill in the second target word. Each group was given both strong and weak associated cues. It might seem likely that given the cue hot-_____, one would think of the target word cold even if one had been given the weakly associated pair of blow-cold at the time of study; however, this was not what happened. Subjects given the cue word blow at study could not recall cold when given hot as a cue but did very well when given their original cue word, blow. In other words, whatever cue word was encoded at the time of study was the best cue for retrieval of the target word at test regardless of how weakly or strongly associated the cue and target words were. Therefore, Tulving predicted that whatever cues are specifically encoded at the time of the event are the best cues for memory at the time of testing. Thus, encoding specificity can be extended to any context cues specific to the memory event. This includes the subject’s mood or surroundings.

Importance of Context

Sometimes the information that is encoded into the memory event is related to the context or surroundings of that event; instead of a word cue, the environment at the time of encoding can be a cue for retrieval. For example, in 1975, Duncan Godden and Alan Baddeley found that memory was better if subjects were asked to remember something in the same physical environment in which they previously had learned the material. They had subjects study a list of words on shore and a list of words underwater. If the list was learned underwater, memory was better if the recall test was also underwater rather than on shore, and vice versa. They concluded that the context provided additional cues for memory.

These context effects have also been demonstrated to include a person’s mood at the time of encoding, known as state-dependent effects. For example, in 1978 Gordon Bower hypnotized subjects into either a positive or negative emotional state and tested their memory for material when they were in the same and different emotional states. Students who were in congruent states of mind at study and test sessions had greater memory than students in different states of mind at study and test. Again, the contextual cues that were associated with a particular state of mind were present at both encoding and retrieval and served to aid recall by being specifically encoded with the event.

Thus, if one wants to increase one’s memory skills, the more types of encoding strategies one uses, the better one will be able to remember. In addition, it is important to remember that using the same cues for both study and test sessions will also result in better performance. Therefore, one might try to do some studying in the same room where one will be taking a test.

Evolution of Research

Cognitive psychology encompasses the study of all the functions of the human mind, including thinking, problem solving, reasoning, attention, consciousness, and processing information. It is considered a relatively new field of psychology, although its roots go back to the work of early psychologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; in a sense they go back even further, to the philosophers of centuries past. In the late 1800s, both the renowned psychologist William James and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, wrote about aspects of consciousness and attention. In the same time period, Hermann Ebbinghaus began studying verbal learning and memory, while Wilhelm Wundt attempted to research the structure of the mind with his method of introspection.

Another significant contribution to cognitive psychology began in 1904, when Ivan Petrovich Pavlov proposed his principles of conditioned learning. This led the way for further study into the learning processes of humans and animals; learning became considered to be an overt action, not a process of the mind. Thus, John B. Watson proposed in 1913 that behavior was the only suitable topic for psychology to study, and the processes of the mind became a taboo subject for many years.

It was not until World War II that cognitive psychology again became a legitimate topic for research. This occurred because the topic of human error became an important question for the military: pilots’ lives could be saved if more could be known about perception and actions. Researchers were employed to determine how decisions were made and to study the importance of attentional processes on performance. From this an entire field of study emerged, and the study of encoding strategies developed as a by-product of studying other processes of the memory system, such as attention, forgetting, and effective retrieval cues.

In the same time frame, the computer emerged; these areas of psychology were formulated in terms of an information-processing model of human memory. In other words, to understand the way memory systems work, a theoretical model of the brain was based on the computer. In 1968, Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggested a model of memory that consisted of three memory stores, each with its own characteristics and functions. This consisted of the sensory register, the short-term memory, and the long-term memory. This information-processing model made the concepts of codes, storage capacity, trace duration, and retrieval failures an area of research. In studying these concepts, researchers discovered new topics of interest.

Research into encoding strategies is concerned with which elements of the environment are selected for encoding and how people can use this information to improve memory performance. The cue environment that is encoded is a topic of great interest, as it can aid performance if it can be predicted. Such components of the cue environment as gestures and emotions that are all encoded below the level of awareness are only beginning to be studied, and they should lead to a much better understanding of how to improve memory.

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