Essay Sample on Memory Strategies

Introduction

Memory strategies denote to the techniques that are designed to assist an individual in remembering. In psychology, memory strategies are techniques used to learn and retain knowledge. They help an individual to possess the ability to recognize information effectively. The paper seeks to explain cognitive mapping and chunking and their effects on our daily lives

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

A cognitive map is a category of mental representation which helps a person to acquire, recall and decode information about areas or instead locations. Cognitive maps help in the construction as well as accumulation of spatial skill that allows "mind's eye" to see images so that they can reduce cognitive load (Bruza et al., 2015). It also assists individuals in enhancing their ability to recall and acquire information about locations.Ideally, cognitive mapping is performed mainly by the hippocampus. The hippocampus is connected to the mind in a manner that is ideal for integrating spatial and no spatial data. The integration of non-spatial information in the hippocampus makes it an empirical location for cognitive mapping. It involves a combination of information about the position of an object and other features. Cognitive mapping has a strong relationship with hippocampus which helps an organism to acquire knowledge on site. For instance, pyramidal cells such as grid cells, boundary cells, and place cells are responsible location knowledge.

Cognitive mapping as a type of memory strategy is facilitated by the presence of place cells. Hippocampus has many place cells which corresponds to a different location in the actual environment. Organisms can utilize the place cells in the hippocampus to construct diverse environment. Most mammals use place cells found in the hippocampus to develop cognitive mapping whereby they create cognitive maps (Kaplan, 2016). Grid cells from the hippocampus are used in integrating paths. The information on path integration is used by the hippocampus to develop the cognitive map.

Chunking is another memory strategy as far as psychology is concerned. Scholars opine that chunking is the process by which people bits of information are collected together to have a meaning. A chunk refers to a collection of more elementary pieces that have been inter-connected and kept in memory (McCauley et al., 2015). Ideally, people create a higher order of cognitive representations of the objects in the list that are more easily recalled as a group than as individual objects themselves. When information is in the form of chunks, individuals tend to remember it regardless how large it is. The size of chunks ranges from two to six objects or items. The feature of chunking can be conclusively demonstrated from howindividuals group information as well as information in our daily lives. For instance, a number like 15101994 can be grouped into chunks, let's say 15, 10 and 1994. A mnemonic can be created for the number in order of a day, month and year. The number is easily remembered as opposed to when it was said as a block.

Nevertheless, when recalling or memorizing a mobile number of your phone or for your friend, 1742256383 might be broken into 1742 256 383. Therefore, people find it easier to remember four groups of numbers than ten digits. Memory training system or mnemonic use chunks as a technique of enhancing memory. Individuals usually develop pieces from the familiar information in their disposal. The average span of digits is seven, but this has been improved to more than seven due to the invention of chunking memory strategy (McCauley et al., 2017). It is suitable for long term memory. Successful professors in any field have used chunking to piece together comprehensive information during their studies. When learning foreign languages, chunking is widely employed by tutors teach their students. Chunking increases the ability of an individual to recall units of information since it prepares the brain to accommodate more complex ideas or information.

The two memory strategies have various effects on our daily lives. Arguably, cognitive mapping helps individuals to travel across the world. Metal maps are kept in the brain which then assists people in their regular movement. The memory strategy is essential in our lives since it helps people living in congested towns and cities to trace their homes, workplaces and shopping centers easily. Drivers and cyclist use the cognitive mapping memory strategy to locate their destination. Individuals with proper cognitive mapping can travel to far places since the hippocampus records every bit of the covered distance as well as landmarks. Most cab drivers have high cognitive mapping due to their frequency in visiting places. Ideally, their spatial knowledge becomes stronger every day as they visit all corners of cities.

On the other hand, cognitive mapping is weaker in pedestrians since they use Google maps to locate places.Cognitive mapping is essential to people because it determines how a person gets to work as well as interacting with people. Nonetheless, cognitive mapping is imperative since it enhances the transport system of a country. Individuals with high cognitive mapping discover opportunities in congested cities because they easily trace the physical location of where they are available. It also has a positive effect on students who study far away from their home. They use the concept of cognitive mapping to locate the school as well as their homes.

Chunking as a memory strategy has a positive effect on our daily lives. For instance, it helps students to acquire complex knowledge. A subject like mathematics starts with chunks of simple arithmetic to complex ones. Chunking in learning assists students in advancing to the next level of education with ease since the complex information is disseminated in small units or chunks. Chunking helps students to remember the information taught in previous grades or classes. It is through chunking that great inventions are meant in our contemporary world. Scientists are known for their exemplary work which is realized by piecing information together to show meaningful ideas. It has a positive effect on storytelling since when stories are told in chunks, the audience can recall most of the told stories, especially when done for educational purposes. Our contemporary communication is made possible due to the chunk concept. Most messages are done in chunks to pass long information to an individual. Short messages are highly grasped than long ones.

Conclusion

In conclusion, chunking and cognitive mapping are imperative memory strategies in our contemporary world. The approaches have led to many inventions especially in the field of science. Cognitive mapping is essential in the transport sector since it makes drivers, cyclists, captains, and pilots to remember locations easily. Both are important to students during learning since it helps them to acquire knowledge in the most challenging subjects. The memory strategies, further, improve the memorability of individuals as they carry out their daily activities.

References

Bruza, P. D., Wang, Z., & Busemeyer, J. R. (2015). Quantum cognition: a new theoretical approach to psychology. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(7), 383-393.

Kaplan, S. (2016). Cognitive maps, human needs and the designed environment 5.4. Environmental Design Research: Volume one selected papers, 275.

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2015, July). Individual Differences in Chunking Ability Predict On-line Sentence Processing. In CogSci.

McCauley, S. M., Isbilen, E. S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2017). Chunking Ability Shapes Sentence Processing at Multiple Levels of Abstraction. In CogSci.