Jacob Johnston, Chapter 10

1. Construction can help in memory retrieval in that it fills in the holes left by
incomplete storage. Otherwise, if we didn’t store all of the details of an event
or statement, we’d be unable to make sense of the memory. For example,
I’m a pretty good Trivial Pursuit player and construction is a big part of my
success. I may not know the exact answer, but by knowing pieces of the
answer and knowing what should be likely given what I know about the
subject, I’m able to construct a memory of the answer that wasn’t all there to
start with. The problem comes when construction fills in the holes with
inaccurate information. For example, as a kid I was convinced that one of our
first family dogs had been responsible for saving my little sister from being
killed or seriously injured when she dragged the little girl from behind a car
that was backing. Unfortunately, my parents have no recollection of this ever
happening. Considering the magnitude of this story, it’s unlikely that they just
forgot about Pam Collie saving their daughter, so inaccurate construction is
likely to blame here. I think what may have happened is that one of
Courtney’s classmates had been seriously injured when his dad backed over
him with a car when he was very young. I think I may have remembered
snippets of conversation my parents had about that event, except with
prominent holes. Through construction I would have known my sister was
obviously uninjured and a car would have left lasting evidence of injury so
that she had to be saved instead of hurt. Also, I knew that Pam Collie had a
special relationship with my young sister and would often protect her as she
would one of her own puppies. I also knew my sister’s adventurous nature
would have made her being in the line of danger quite likely. Through
construction, I ended up with a vivid memory of being told by my parents
about how our family dog saved my sister’s life despite it being far from
accurate.

2. One possible reason that I may be unable to explain elaboration to my friend

in a decade is decay. While I may have taken understanding of the class with
me into my future work, it’s likely that I take the gist of it and not an
encyclopedic memory including proper terminology. In other words, I likely
won’t have thought about what I learned in elaboration since I finished the
course. Decay is thought to occur more in memory, especially when the
information is not used regularly or in a long time. A second explanation is
simply a failure to recall. The memory may very well be restored, but I simply
can’t find it. I experience this frequently when I’m tired and can’t think of a
name or simple word that I know I should be able to recall easily. In this case,
perhaps the context in which I was asked about elaboration is sending me
down the wrong path of associations. I’m just not thinking of ideas in the right
associative web to find elaboration. A third explanation is that I forgot to do
my annotated bibliography in this course (and I’m hoping this turns out to be
 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 10

entirely hypothetical) and ended up failing the course. The trauma led me to
drop the program so I never retook the course. This traumatic event led me
to repress the information that I actually did learn in the class. It also
conditioned me to fear online courses so that I had to move to a major city to
earn my masters in Economics for some reason. Finally, perhaps elaboration
is a casualty of my failure to store or consolidate. I managed to keep the
concept in my memory long enough to complete the chapter assignment and
answer the couple of questions using it on the test and promptly forgot it
because I did not put forth the effort to process the concept enough to store
it in long-term memory with ample associations. This, however, is purely
example, and I’m sure I’d be able to present this friend with more information
about elaboration than they really wanted to know.

3. One thing I can do to help my assessments become better learning tools is to

focus more on questions that require the students to use their own words and
apply the information instead of just recall facts. In other words, instead of
just having students recite the definition of character traits, I should ask them
to describe the character traits of a character in a story or to list the traits of
a character of their own creation. I should also encourage review before the
assessment. This makes the assessment a more extended learning process
than just the test itself. For example, I have a review quiz came before every
test and the students know that their reward is based on how well they
answer the question in the quiz game. Because I don’t allow much time to
look up answers, the students are encouraged to study the night before the
review game in addition to the actual review of the quiz game. Finally,
feedback, and prompt feedback, is essential because it reinforces the
memory of the correct answers and punishes the memory of the incorrect
memories.

Name _______________________GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

Directions: Santa can tell who's been bad and who's been good, but can you? The
answer to each of the 14 clues below is a word or phrase containing GOOD, BAD, or
both GOOD and BAD. For example, the clue "Three little pigs' nemesis" would lead
to THE BIG BAD WOLF while "King Ralph star" is JOHN GOODMAN.

1. Hershey confection with peanuts- Mr. Goodbar

 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 10

2. 1967 spaghetti western - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

3. Dakota region - Badlands (I was there last week)

4. Maxwell Anderson play about an innocent-looking but evil

young girl

- The Bad Seed

5. Macaulay Culkin movie about an innocent-looking but evil

young boy

- The Good Son

6. Game played with a birdie – Badminton

7. Capital of Pakistan – Islamabad

8. 1983 book about grief by Harold Kushner – When Bad Things

Happen to Good People

9. Ice cream brand – Good Humor

10. Nickname for Wisconsin – Badger State

11. Provider of aerial shots at sports events – Goodyear

 Jacob Johnston, Chapter 10

12. Frontman for the Destroyers . . . – George Thorogood

13. . . . and their 1982 hit song – Bad to the Bone

14. So long – Goodbye

Article response:

The concept of think time and wait time seems to reinforce the idea that we’ve
learned that for information to be stored into long-term memory, it must be
processed enough and be provided with enough associations for meaningful
learning to occur. By giving the students a few seconds to think about the
information instead of just giving them the answer, the students are more likely to
do some the processing of the information that they need to do. Also, because of
how it affects the teacher’s questioning by leading them toward more complex and
higher-learning questions, the teacher begins to use the questioning as a tool that
increases the processing of the information by the students as well as giving them a
structure on which to build their associations for the information to be stored for
later recall.