Blog Post 2 (Activity)

Next, share your story with us as a blog entry (we should all be working from the same 20 objects, so it will be interesting to compare the different ways that we encoded).

• One day a cow got a haircut by a lobster with an oversized pair of scissors. While the clown laughed at his haircut the cow sat on the chair and cried while watching his favorite show on tv. After the show was over the cow fed his pet fish.

Describe your experience in trying this activity. Was it surprising? Difficult?

• This was an interesting activity and one thing that was surprising to me was how many objects I did not remember. I thought that after two minutes of looking at the 20 objects I would have remembered more than just seven of them. One thing that was difficult for me was trying to memorize all of the objects by simply looking at them. If I were to do this again I would try to come up with some sort of technique to remember the objects.

Explain HOW this activity (or another form of elaboration) influences memory. How does it connect to working memory capacity? Will this storytelling strategy affect sensory or long term memory? Why?

• This activity influences memory in many ways. The act of having to remember as many objects ad possible is one way memory is being influenced as well as having to create your own story. People tend to memorize things better when it is something they are familiar with and since the story is made up by prior knowledge I had it was much easier to memorize. This storytelling strategy would affect the sensory memory because you are looking at the pictures (visual) and telling a story with your prior knowledge you have of the objects.