Kate has a big psychology test coming up tomorrow. She and several classmates get together to do some final studying. Discuss how each of the following concepts may help or hinder Kate and her classmates during their study session and subsequent testing experience? Be sure to explain how your application illustrates the given term.
1. Short term memory capacity.
2. Serial position curve.
3. Forgetting curve.
4. Pro-active.
5. Parallel distributed processing model.
6. Semantic versus visual encoding (comparison).
7. Context dependence memory.

1. Short term memory capacity

• Short-term memory holds information encoded from sensory memory, and what may be sent to LTM.

• The number of items that can be held in STM is limited to the "magic number" of 7 + or -2.

- Short-term memory capacity is 7(+ or -) 2 - STM can hold 5-9 items for about 20 seconds. This would hinder Kate and her classmates. Assuming that they will need to remember more information than what will reliably remain in STM without being encoded in LTM for their test.

2. Serial position effect is the tendency to recall best, the last and first items in a list

3. Forgetting curve: Ebbinghaus identified that forgetting will occur rapidly within 9 hours after studying so review time (relearning time) needs to be considered. If Kate has time tomorrow morning, she should review the information as soon as she wakes up, to prevent the

greatest percentage of loss, which occurs within the first 9 hours. If she can over-learn the information, she will be less likely to forget it.

4. Spacing effect is the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice. If katie and her friends had paid attention in class, they would know they would increase their chances of recall if they studied the material over time, as opposed to cramming, since the spacing effect causes better retention of material.

5. Semantic vs. Visual Encoding:

Semantic encoding would help Kate with her test tomorrow more than visual because if she were to semantically encode the material she would be able to understand and put the info in her own context. If she visually encoded it she would only remember what it looked like in her notes, so she doesn't really understand the meaning behind

it, and would have trouble applying the knowledge to any situation other than how it was in her notes.

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