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 illusionsSome 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:
Memory Illusions
Memory Illusions
Memory Illusions
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 illusionsSome 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: