Module 11 Post 2

I was watching TV when I came across the hunting channel. The episode was about hunting deer. I decided to eat a donut and watch the show. Later it was an episode about cows. I thought about how cows live in a barn and how you would need a lot of mouse traps to capture all the mice. My donuts were gone and I started to think about what I wanted for dinner. Lobster? What would happen if you put the lobster in a fish tank? And what should I make for dessert? How about some cake and milk: real milk from cows. I should look presentable at dinner, I thought. I need a comb to brush my hair and maybe I should trim my bangs. The chair I was sitting on was getting rather comfortable but I needed to pick out an outfit for dinner! I wondered if anyone would bring me presents. My friend Jill just went to the circus where she saw elephants and clowns. Maybe she bought me a souvenir. I got out of the chair and decided to make my bed. I always think about Goldilocks trying out the beds of the bears when I’m making my bed!

I think I did a pretty good job at memorizing the objects the first time I looked at the picture. I was able to associate the pictures together in pairs and that made it easier. I didn’t remember the mouse or mousetrap when I tried to recall the information. I guess it was easier to remember the information when I created a story, but it was initially a bit difficult to come up with a story that made sense. I did remember all the images when I saw them again and created a story.

Perhaps if my story made more sense, it would eventually make its way into my long-term memory. It will certainly be a lot easier to remember the story than to remember 20 individual images. Had I just tried to memorize the images, without making a connection between them all, they would probably quickly be forgotten (even within seconds of the activity). Elaboration influences memory by allowing us to connect new information to previous knowledge. By using elaborative rehearsal, we are making sense out of seemingly meaningless information (for example, making a string of digits for a password be the same as your birthday, so that it means something to you but it really is just numbers in a certain order). By creating a story, we are making sense out of 20 seemingly random images and then we are able to remember the order of the images because of the story we made (we created a way to have the images mean something to us through the story).