Memory Illusions
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #7
Hello, and welcome to another update on memory and metacognition. It's great to connect with you!
I want to start today by saying a little about how I got interested in this area in the first place.
Prior to joining the University of Strathclyde in 2017, I worked as a secondary school teacher of psychology, and I regularly taught memory as a course topic. I was interested in study skills, but it was only gradually that I became interested in metacognition.
The more I learned about long-term memory in particular, the more I realised how many illusions and misconceptions there are about it.
As time went on, it became apparent to me that practitioners need a metacognitive understanding of memory. Otherwise, we may be making flawed choices – and we may not realise what we are getting wrong.
Memory techniques and illusions
Some of the techniques I have discussed in previous issues are good examples of illusions relating to memory and learning.
Take the spacing effect, for example. People mistakenly assume that practising something soon after an initial study session is the best move, but the evidence suggests that it is better to delay that practice.
More broadly, people don't seem to intuitively understand how their memory works:
People often think that memory works a bit like a video recorder. Pretty much universally, memory researchers disagree.
Learners and teachers alike mistake immediate performance for permanent learning. They tend to assume that after a single lesson or review session, things have been learned.
This is certainly applicable in my own role. People who are observing student teachers often assume that they can comment on what a class have learned during a lesson. But the fact is that you can't 'see' learning in a single lesson (if you can see it at all).
I discuss this idea in the blog post below:
Misled by short-term performance in lessons: Applying the science of memory in the classroom | BERA — www.bera.ac.uk Successful learning depends upon the functioning of human long-term memory (LTM) – a set of psychological processes that allow us to retain skills and knowledge over the long term, and which...
Overall, these points show that memory is tricky and hard to understand, meaning that learning is, too!
Recommended read
A fascinating article that illuminates a number of flawed beliefs about memory is the work of Simons & Chabris (2011):
What People Believe about How Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population
The article is not specific to education, but I find it a great starting point. If the general public have misconceptions about memory, then we can be pretty sure that our students will, too, as will family members who are helping schoolchildren with homework and revision.
In my own journey, research such as this has helped me to understand why we can't rely on experience alone to understand long-term memory. It shows that although everyone uses their memory every single day, most don't understand fairly basic things about how remembering and forgetting work. Learners don't intuitively know what best to do, and neither do educators!
This is why professional learning about memory is so important.
Next time
Today, I have explained how studying memory processes led me directly to an interest metacognition and flawed beliefs. Next time, I'll say more about the implications for professional learning, as well as how we tackle this without overburdening teachers.
Until then, take care :)
Jonathan
Last week: The concept of memory
Next week: Professional learning
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe to Memory & Metacognition Updates below, so that you don't miss anything!