Encoding (memory): Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Biological memory process in organisms}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}

[[Memory]] has the ability to '''encode''', [[Storage (memory)|store]] and [[Recall (memory)|recall]] information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. '''Encoding''' allows a perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from [[long-term memory]].<ref name=":7">{{Cite book|title=Cognitive Psychology; Connecting the Mind, Research and Everyday Experience.|last=Goldstein|first=E. Bruce|publisher=Cengage Learning|year=2015|isbn=9781285763880|___location=Stamford, CT. USA|pages=122}}</ref> [[Working memory]] stores information for immediate use or manipulation, which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.<ref name=":7" />

==History==

[[File:Ebbinghaus2.jpg|thumb|alt=Hermann Ebbinghaus|Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-19091850–1909)]]

Encoding is still relatively new and unexplored but the origins of encoding date back to age -old philosophers such as [[Aristotle]] and [[Plato]]. A major figure in the history of encoding is [[Hermann Ebbinghaus]] (1850–1909). Ebbinghaus was a pioneer in the field of memory research. Using himself as a subject he studied how we learn and forget information by repeating a list of [[nonsense syllable]]s to the rhythm of a metronome until they were committed to his memory.<ref name="ebbingbook">Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.</ref> These experiments leadled him to suggest the [[learning curve]].<ref name="ebbingbook" /> He used these relatively meaningless words so that prior associations between meaningful words would not influence learning. He found that lists that allowed associations to be made and semantic meaning wasto be apparent were easier to recall. Ebbinghaus' results paved the way for experimental psychology in memory and other mental processes.

During the 1900s, further progress in memory research was made. [[Ivan Pavlov]] began research pertaining toabout [[classical conditioning]]. His research demonstrated the ability to create a semantic relationship between two unrelated items.

In 1932, Frederic Bartlett proposed the idea of mental [[Schema (psychology)|schema]]s. This model proposed that whether new information would be encoded was dependent on its consistency with prior knowledge (mental schemas).<ref name="bartlett32">Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.</ref> This model also suggested that information not present at the time of encoding would be added to memory if it was based on schematic knowledge of the world.<ref name="bartlett32" /> In this way, encoding was found to be influenced by prior knowledge.

With the advance of [[Gestalt psychology|Gestalt theory]] came the realization that memory for encoded information was often perceived as different from the stimuli that triggered it. It was also influenced by the context thatin which the stimuli were embedded in.

With advances in technology, the field of neuropsychology emerged and with it a biological basis for theories of encoding. In 1949, Donald [[Donald O. Hebb|Hebb]] looked at the neuroscience aspect of encoding and stated that "neurons that fire together wire together," implying that encoding occurred as connections between neurons were established through repeated use.

The 1950s and 60's60s saw a shift to the information processing approach to memory based on the invention of computers, followed by the initial suggestion that encoding was the process by which information is entered into memory. In 1956, [[George Armitage Miller]] wrote his paper on how short-term memory is limited to seven items, plus-or-minus two, called [[The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two]]. This number was appended when studies done on [[Chunking (psychology)|chunking]] revealed that seven, plus or minus two could also refer to seven "packets of information".

In 1974, [[Alan Baddeley]] and [[Graham Hitch]] proposed their [[Baddeley's model of working memory|model of working memory]], which consists of the central executive, visuo-spatial sketchpad, and phonological loop as a method of encoding. In 2000, Baddeley added the episodic buffer.<ref name="text" /> Simultaneously [[Endel Tulving]] (1983) proposed the idea of encoding specificity whereby context was again noted as an influence on encoding.

==Types==

There are two main approaches to codinganalyzing how the brain encodes information: the physiological approach, and the mental approach. The physiological approach looks at how a stimulus is represented by neurons firing in the brain, while the mental approach looks at how the stimulus is represented in the mind.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Parker|first1=Amanda|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PSB5AgAAQBAJ&q=physiological+and+mental+approaches+to+encoding+memory&pg=PP1|title=The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory: Encoding and Retrieval|last2=Bussey|first2=Timothy J.|last3=Wilding|first3=Edward L.|date=2005-08-18|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-1-135-43073-3|language=en}}</ref>

There are many types of mental encoding that are used, such as visual, elaborative, organizational, acoustic, and semantic. However, this is not an extensive list.

===Visual encoding===

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Semantic encoding is the processing and encoding of sensory input that has particular meaning or can be applied to a context. Various strategies can be applied such as [[Chunking (psychology)|chunking]] and [[mnemonic]]s to aid in encoding, and in some cases, allow deep processing, and optimizing retrieval.

Words studied in semantic or deep encoding conditions are better recalled as compared to both easy and hard groupings of nonsemantic or shallow encoding conditions with response time being the deciding variable.<ref name="Demb">Demb, JB., Desmond, JE., [[John Gabrieli|Gabrieli, JD.]], [[Gary H. Glover|Glover, GH.]], Vaidya, CJ., & Wagner, AD. Semantic encoding and retrieval in the left inferior prefrontal cortex: a functional MRI study of task difficulty and process specificity. The Journal of Neuroscience; 15, 5870-5878.</ref> [[Brodmann area|Brodmann's areas]] 45, 46, and 47 (the left inferior prefrontal cortex or LIPC) showed significantly more activation during semantic encoding conditions compared to nonsemantic encoding conditions regardless of the difficulty of the nonsemantic encoding task presented. The same area showing increased activation during initial semantic encoding will also display decreasing activation with repetitive semantic encoding of the same words. This suggests the decrease in activation with repetition is process specific occurring when words are semantically reprocessed but not when they are nonsemantically reprocessed.<ref name="Demb" /> Lesion and neuroimaging studies suggest that the [[orbitofrontal cortex]] is responsible for initial encoding and that activity in the left lateral prefrontal cortex correlates with the semantic organization of encoded information.<ref name="Frey, Stephen, and Michael Petrides. 2002">Frey, S., & Petrides, M. (2002). Orbitofrontal cortex and memory formation. Neuron, 36(1), 171-176.</ref>

===Acoustic encoding===

Acoustic encoding is the encoding of auditory impulses. According to Baddeley, processing of auditory information is aided by the concept of the phonological loop, which allows input within our echoic memory to be sub vocally rehearsed in order to facilitate remembering.<ref name="text"/>

When we hear any word, we do so by hearing individual sounds, one at a time. Hence the memory of the beginning of a new word is stored in our echoic memory until the whole sound has been perceived and recognized as a word.<ref>{{cite book|last=Carlson and Heth(2010)|title=Psychology the Science of Behaviour 4e|publisher=Pearson Education Canada|chapter=Chapter 8|page=233}}</ref>

Studies indicate that lexical, semantic and phonological factors interact in verbal working memory. The phonological similarity effect (PSE), is modified by word concreteness. This emphasizes that verbal working memory performance cannot exclusively be attributed to phonological or acoustic representation but also includes an interaction of linguistic representation.<ref name="Acheson">Acheson, D.J., MacDonald, M.C., & Postle, B.R. (2010). The Interaction of Concreteness and Phonological Similarity in Verbal Working Memory. Journal of Experimental Psychogy: Learning, Memory and Cognition; 36:1, 17-36.</ref> What remains to be seen is whether linguistic representation is expressed at the time of recall or whether the representational methods used (such as recordings, videos, symbols, etc.) participate in a more fundamental role in encoding and preservation of information in memory.<ref name="Acheson"/> The brain relies primarily on acoustic (aka phonological) encoding for use in short-term storage and primarily semantic encoding for use in long-term storage.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Hughes|first1=Robert W.|last2=Chamberland|first2=Cindy|last3=Tremblay|first3=Sébastien|last4=Jones|first4=Dylan M.|date=October 2016|title=Perceptual-motor determinants of auditory-verbal serial short-term memory|journal=Journal of Memory and Language|language=en|volume=90|pages=126–146|doi=10.1016/j.jml.2016.04.006|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Baddeley|first=A. D.|date=1966|title=The Influence of Acoustic and Semantic Similarity on Long-term Memory for Word Sequences|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14640746608400047|journal=Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology|volume=18|issue=4|pages=302–309|doi=10.1080/14640746608400047|pmid=5956072|s2cid=39981510|issn=0033-555X|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

===Other senses===

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===Intention to Learn===

Studies have shown that the intention to learn has no direct effect on memory encoding. Instead, memory encoding is dependent on how deeply each item is encoded, which could be affected by intention to learn, but not exclusively. That is, intention to learn can lead to more effective learning strategies, and consequently, better memory encoding, but if youone learnlearns something incidentally (i.e. without intention to learn), but still processprocesses and learnlearns the information effectively, it will get encoded just as well as something learntlearned with intention.<ref>Hyde, Thomas S. & Jenkins, James J. (1973). Recall for words as a function of semantic, graphic, and syntactic orienting tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12(5), 471-480</ref>

The effects of elaborative rehearsal or deep processing can be attributed to the number of connections made while encoding that increase the number of pathways available for retrieval.<ref>Craik, F. I., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104(3), 268-294.</ref>

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===Mnemonics===

{{main|Mnemonics}}

[[File:Rainbow-diagram-ROYGBIV.svg|thumb|alt= Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet|The mnemonic "Roy G. Biv" can be used to remember the colors of the rainbow.]]

When memorizing simple material such as lists of words, mnemonics may be the best strategy, while "material already in long-term store [will be] unaffected".<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SVxyXuG73wwC&q=%22Simple+material%22+memory+milner+1966&pg=PA89|title=Psychology of Learning and Motivation|date=1968|publisher=Academic Press|isbn=978-0-08-086353-5|language=en}}</ref> Mnemonic Strategies are an example of how finding organization within a set of items helps these items to be remembered. In the absence of any apparent organization within a group, organization can be imposed with the same memory enhancing results. An example of a mnemonic strategy that imposes organization is the ''[[Mnemonic peg system|peg-word system]]'' which associates the to-be-remembered items with a list of easily remembered items. Another example of a mnemonic device commonly used is the first letter of every word system or [[acronyms]]. When learning the colours in a [[rainbow]] most students learn the first letter of every color and impose their own meaning by associating it with a name such as Roy. G. Biv which stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. In this way mnemonic devices not only help the encoding of specific items but also their sequence. For more complex concepts, understanding is the key to remembering. In a study done by Wiseman and Neisser in 1974 they presented participants with a picture (the picture was of a Dalmatian in the style of [[pointillism]] making it difficult to see the image).<ref>Wiseman, S., & Neisser, U. (1974). Perceptual organization as a determinant of visual recognition memory. American Journal of Psychology, 87(4), 675-681.</ref> They found that memory for the picture was better if the participants understood what was depicted.

===Chunking===

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{{main|Generation effect}}

Another principle that may have the potential to aid encoding is the generation effect. The generation effect implies that learning is enhanced when individuals generate information or items themselves rather than reading the content.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=McDaniel|first1=Mark A|last2=Waddill|first2=Paula J|last3=Einstein|first3=Gilles O|date=1988|title=A contextual account of the generation effect: A three-factor theory|journal=Journal of Memory and Language|volume=27|issue=5|pages=521–536|doi=10.1016/0749-596x(88)90023-x|issn=0749-596X}}</ref> The key to properly apply the generation effect is to generate information, rather than passively selecting from information already available like in selecting an answer from a multiple-choice question<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Brown|first1=Peter C.|title=Make It Stick|last2=Roediger|first2=Henry L.|last3=McDaniel|first3=Mark A.|date=2014-01-31|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-41937-7|___location=Cambridge, MA and London, England|doi=10.4159/9780674419377|s2cid=147985528 }}</ref> In 1978, researchers Slameka and Graf conducted an experiment to better understand this effect.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Goldstein, E. Bruce, 1941-|title=Cognitive psychology : connecting mind, research and everyday experience|date=2015|publisher=Cengage learning|isbn=978-1-285-76388-0|edition=4th|___location=New york|oclc=885178247}}</ref> In this experiment, the participants were assigned to one of two groups, the ''read group'' or the ''generate group''.<ref name=":1" /> The participants assigned to the ''read'' ''group'' were asked to simply read a list of paired words that were related, for example, horse-saddle.<ref name=":1" /> The participants assigned to the ''generate'' ''group'' were asked to fill in the blank letters of one of the related words in the pair.<ref name=":1" /> In other words, if the participant was given the word ''horse,'' they would need to fill in the last four letters of the word ''saddle''.The researchers discovered that the group that was asked to fill in the blanks had better recall for these word pairs than the group that was asked to simply remember the word pairs.<ref name=":0" />

=== Self-Reference Effect ===

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=== Salience ===

{{main|Salience (language)|Salience (neuroscience)}}

When an item or idea is considered "salient", it means the item or idea appears to noticeably stand out.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com|title=Definition of Salient|access-date=2020-03-12}}</ref> When information is salient, it may be encoded in memory more efficiently than if the information did not stand out to the learner.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Krauel|first1=Kerstin|last2=Duzel|first2=Emrah|last3=Hinrichs|first3=Hermann|last4=Santel|first4=Stephanie|last5=Rellum|first5=Thomas|last6=Baving|first6=Lioba|date=2007-06-15|title=Impact of Emotional Salience on Episodic Memory in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study|journal=Biological Psychiatry|language=en|volume=61|issue=12|pages=1370–1379|doi=10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.08.051|pmid=17210138|s2cid=23255107}}</ref> In reference to encoding, any event involving survival may be considered salient. Research has shown that survival may be related to the self-reference effect due to evolutionary mechanisms.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Cunningham|first1=Sheila J.|last2=Brady-Van den Bos|first2=Mirjam|last3=Gill|first3=Lucy|last4=Turk|first4=David J.|date=2013-03-01|title=Survival of the selfish: Contrasting self-referential and survival-based encoding|journal=Consciousness and Cognition|language=en|volume=22|issue=1|pages=237–244|doi=10.1016/j.concog.2012.12.005|pmid=23357241|s2cid=14230747|url=https://rke.abertay.ac.uk/en/publications/1a5cf356-4dda-40e1-b1f9-b1764e7971ab}}</ref> Researchers have discovered that even words that are high in survival value are encoded better than words that are ranked lower in survival value.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last1=Nairne|first1=James S.|last2=Thompson|first2=Sarah R.|last3=Pandeirada|first3=Josefa N. S.|date=2007|title=Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention.|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition|language=en|volume=33|issue=2|pages=263–273|doi=10.1037/0278-7393.33.2.263|pmid=17352610|s2cid=2924502 |issn=1939-1285}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last1=Weinstein|first1=Y.|last2=Bugg|first2=J. M.|last3=Roediger|first3=H. L.|date=2008-07-01|title=Can the survival recall advantage be explained by basic memory processes?|journal=Memory & Cognition|language=en|volume=36|issue=5|pages=913–919|doi=10.3758/MC.36.5.913|pmid=18630198|issn=0090-502X|doi-access=free}}</ref> Some research supports evolution, claiming that the human species remembers content associated with survival.<ref name=":4" /> Some researchers wanted to see for themselves whether or not the findings of other research was accurate.<ref name=":5" /> The researchers decided to replicate an experiment with results that supported the idea that survival content is encoded better than other content.<ref name=":5" /> The findings of the experiment further suggested that survival content has a higher advantage of being encoded than other content.<ref name=":5" />

=== Retrieval Practice ===

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===Free Recall===

In [[free recall]], one is allowed to recall items that were learned in any order. For example, you could be asked to name as many countries in Europe as you can. Free recall can be modeled using [[Semantic memory#Search of Associative Memory .28SAM.29(SAM)|SAM]] (Search of Associative Memory) which is based on the dual-store model, first proposed by [[Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model|Atkinson and Shiffrin]] in 1968.<ref>Raaijmakers, J. G. W., Schiffrin, R. M. (1981). Search of associative memory. Psychological Review, 8(2), 98-134</ref> SAM consists of two main components: [[Short-term memory|short-term store]] (STS) and [[Long-term memory|long-term store]] (LTS). In brief, when an item is seen, it is pushed into STS where it resides with other items also in STS, until it displaced and put into LTS. The longer the item has been in STS, the more likely it is to be displaced by a new item. When items co-reside in STS, the links between those items are strengthened. Furthermore, SAM assumes that items in STS are always available for immediate recall.

SAM explains both primacy and recency effects. Probabilistically, items at the beginning of the list are more likely to remain in STS, and thus have more opportunities to strengthen their links to other items. As a result, items at the beginning of the list are made more likely to be recalled in a free-recall task (primacy effect). Because of the assumption that items in STS are always available for immediate recall, given that there were no significant distractors between learning and recall, items at the end of the list can be recalled excellently (recency effect).

Studies have shown that free recall is one of the most effective methods of studying and transferring information from short term memory to long term memory compared to item recognition and cued recall as greater relational processing is involved.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Rawson|first1=Katherine A.|last2=Zamary|first2=Amanda|date=2019-04-01|title=Why is free recall practice more effective than recognition practice for enhancing memory? Evaluating the relational processing hypothesis|url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749596X19300026|journal=Journal of Memory and Language|language=en|volume=105|pages=141–152|doi=10.1016/j.jml.2019.01.002|s2cid=149703416 |issn=0749-596X|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Incidentally, the idea of STS and LTS was motivated by the architecture of computers, which contain short-term and long-term storage.

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Associative chaining theory states that every item in a list is linked to its forward and backward neighbors, with forward links being stronger than backward links, and links to closer neighbors being stronger than links to farther neighbors. For example, associative chaining predicts the tendencies of transposition errors, which occur most often with items in nearby positions. An example of a transposition error would be recalling the sequence "apple, orange, banana" instead of "apple, banana, orange."

Positional [[coding theory]] suggests that every item in a list is associated to its position in the list. For example, if the list is "apple, banana, orange, mango" apple will be associated to list position 1, banana to 2, orange to 3, and mango to 4. Furthermore, each item is also, albeit more weakly, associated to its index +/- 1, even more weakly to +/- 2, and so forth. So banana is associated not only to its actual index 2, but also to 1, 3, and 4, with varying degrees of strength. For example, positional coding can be used to explain the effects of recency and primacy. Because items at the beginning and end of a list have fewer close neighbors compared to items in the middle of the list, they have less competition for correct recall.

Although the models of associative chaining and positional coding are able to explain a great amount of behavior seen for sequence memory, they are far from perfect. For example, neither chaining nor positional coding is able to properly illustrate the details of the [[Ranschburg effect]], which reports that sequences of items that contain repeated items are harder to reproduce than sequences of unrepeated items. Associative chaining predicts that recall of lists containing repeated items is impaired because recall of any repeated item would cue not only its true successor but also the successors of all other instances of the item. However, experimental data have shown that spaced repetition of items resulted in impaired recall of the second occurrence of the repeated item.<ref>Crowder, R. G. (1968). Intraserial repetition effects in immediate memory.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Encoding (Memory)}}

[[Category:Memory processes]]