Precis Article III

Joshua Paris

5/10/09

Ms. Brown

Precis-Article III

Article III was fundamentally informative on the psychological aspect of memory, and ways that we remember things and the reasons why we forget. In the article, it explains that many of our memories comes from a sense of detail, and because of this detailed imagery, we develop a sense of long term memory. Although we can hold lots of things in long-term memory, the details of the memory aren’t always crystal-clear and are often limited to just the gist of what we saw or what happened. There is also a very important kind of memory called Semantic memory which stores facts and generalized information. It contains verbal information, concepts, rules, principles, and problem-solving skills. Episodic memory stores information as images, semantic memory stores information in networks or schemata. Information is most easily stored in semantic memory when it is meaningful - that is, easily related to existing, well-established schemata. The key point of this section is that information is stored in the long-term memory in a structured fashion - with elements of knowledge chained together or organized in schema related to specific topics. Information is likely to be effectively entered into long-term memory to the extent that the learner actively interacts with the information in working memory. It is impossible to actively interact with information without making connections with existing information, and these connections facilitate storage of information even if the learner is unaware that information is being transferred to long-term memory. A large amount of permanent learning occurs automatically, without conscious effort on the part of the learner. In other instances, the learner or observer may make deliberate attempts to transfer information to long-term memory.