study guides
study guide for superdomain04d ["Government"]
Material from: McCabe, J. A. (2015). Location, location, location! Demonstrating the mnemonic benefit of the Method of Loci. Teaching of Psychology, 42(2), 24-41.
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1. Know whether or not desirable difficulties…[are] inherent to many of these strategies; that is, their advantages are not obvious because they slow down learning in the short term, only showing their memory benefit over a longer period of time. Know whether or not MoL involves imagining an ordered list of to-be-remembered items being dropped off in locations along a well-known route [and] then, at the time of recall, taking a mental walk through those locations in order to ‘‘pick up” the items. Know whether or not, as homework, students created their own Memory Palaces using locations on their home campus at Goucher College.
2. Know whether or not MoL involves imagining an ordered list of to-be-remembered items being dropped off in locations along a well-known route; then, at the time of recall, taking a mental walk through those locations in order to‘‘pick up’’ the items. Know whether or not MoL is one of the newest mnemonics documented and has been researched as an effective memory aide for only the past decade. Know whether or not MoL has the added advantage of incorporating vivid mental imagery. Know whether or not one dependent measure was the pretest to posttest change in a memory aids questionnaire, with the hypothesis that students would show an especially large increase in their self-reported use of ‘‘the place method’’ (i.e.,MoL) in daily life.
3. Know whether or not students present in class on one day or the other (but not necessarily both) of data collection were included in the central analyses. Know whether or not the ‘‘Memory Aids’’ questionnaire contained descriptions of fewer than half a dozen commonly used mnemonic aids. Know whether or not using the code name strategy allowed the research to keep the data anonymous and retain the ability to conduct within-subjects comparisons. Know whether or not, as a homework assignment, each student created his or her own Memory Palace using 12 ordered locations on Goucher College’s campus.
4. Know whether or not the alpha level was set at .05 for all analyses. Know whether or not, because the self-report scale from the questionnaire was ordinal, the researchers conducted nonparametric analyses to compare pretest to post-test scores. Know whether or not two participants explicitly mentioned MoL (although one noted he or she did not have enough time to use it). Know whether or not the goal of this research was to provide evidence for an effective pedagogical technique to help students learn about, create, and more frequently use a specific mnemonic strategy, the MoL.
5. Know whether or not, following an assigned reading on MoL and the creation of individual Memory Palaces based on campus locations, students showed significant increases in serial recall of a 12 item grocery list from pretest to posttest. Know whether or not the activity allowed students to experience in real time the improvement in their own memories, using a memory device personally meaningful to them…and reusable in future situations. Know whether or not it is the author’s hope that students would walk away from this activity feeling more convinced that memory skill is ‘‘made, not born’’…and that this in turn would increase motivation and effort toward improving their memories. Know whether or not the overwhelmingly modal response for strategy used was MoL.
6. Know whether or not [this research] also supports the idea that ignorance and/or nonuse of desirably difficult…strategies, including mnemonics such as MoL, may be the norm among college students. Know whether or not it is possible that the frequency-of-use ratings reflect students’ enhanced familiarity with these strategies due to the class demonstrations. Know whether or not a simple activity that took no more than 10 minutes of time on 2 days of class was associated with substantial improvement in participants’ memories when using MoL, and with increased MoL use ratings on a self-report questionnaire. Know whether or not A criticism of MoL is that for as much time and effort as it takes to create a Memory Palace, its usefulness may be questionable beyond remembering what to get at the store or, for those few dedicated memory experts, memorizing decks of cards.
7. Know whether or not recent research shows that MoL assisted people with depression by aiding retrieval of self-affirming episodic memories ‘‘stored’’ at each location of a Memory Palace. Know whether or not, since empirical research has shown MoL to be effective, particularly for serially ordered lists, knowledge and use of MoL in undergraduates is high. Know whether or not the fact that there was a significant increase in reported use of the place method (i.e., MoL) from the start to the end of the semester suggests that the activity may have helped change [student] behaviors to apply this mnemonic more often in their lives. Know whether or not two students described visualizing the items as they would put them in a cart on a trip to the grocery store, a strategy which resembles MoL. Know whether or not students in the Spring 2014 section, asked about which strategies they used to remember the list during the pretest, reported that the most commonly stated strategy was repetition…, followed by chunking/grouping…and rehearsing the items to a song or rhythm.
8. Know whether or not, at pretest, only 3% of the participants achieved a perfect strict serial score and 2% scored 11 of 12. Know whether or not one memory aid on the questionnaire that showed a significant increase in use was face-name association. Know whether or not the author encourages researchers to be creative in finding other nontraditional uses for MoL, allowing for this powerful memory technique to be applied in a variety of situations. Know whether or not the finding that the only two memory aids (of 19) showing pre–post increases were the ones on which in-depth classroom demonstrations were based supports the argument that this type of activity may encourage students to use memory strategies more frequently.
"As Below, So Above"
