Fiche de révision : Learning and Cognition

📋 Course Outline

1. Memory Palace Technique
2. Spaced Repetition and Serial Position
3. Models of Memory and Cognition
4. Neuroplasticity and Learning
5. Cortisol and Declarative Memory
6. Biological Bases of Memory
7. Cognitive Load and Technology
8. Research Methods and Examination

📖 1. Memory Palace Technique

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Method of loci : A mnemonic strategy that improves memory and recall by associating information with specific physical locations or landmarks in an imagined mental space.

📝 Essential Points

🔄 Process — The method of loci uses spatial memory by mentally placing information along a familiar route, such as rooms in a house, so that the locations cue later recall.

• Dressler found in a true experiment that participants who learned the method of loci recalled twice as many words as participants who did not use it.

💡 Memory Hook

Place information along a familiar route

📖 2. Spaced Repetition and Serial Position

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Spaced repetition : A memory-improvement strategy based on distributing rehearsal or learning opportunities over time.

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

📌 The recency effect depends more on short-term memory than the primacy effect and disappears when a distractor task is introduced.

Further detail

🔄 Process — The primacy effect can occur because early list items receive more time and opportunity for rehearsal, spacing their encoding and strengthening them in long-term memory.

💡 Memory Hook

Primacy is rehearsed; recency is temporary

📖 3. Models of Memory and Cognition

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Cognitive process : A mental process that occurs in the mind and is not necessarily directly visible.
• Model : A conceptual framework used to help explain and understand a process, such as the cognitive process of memory.

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

• The multistore model of memory was proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968.

Further detail

🔄 Process — Scientific models or theories are developed to explain processes and are tested through experiments or other empirical evidence.

📖 4. Neuroplasticity and Learning

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Neuroplasticity : The capacity of the brain to change in response to environmental stimulation through the making and breaking of synaptic connections.

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

📌 Learning is supported by neuroplasticity because learning involves the formation of new synaptic connections.

Further detail

• Research comparing the brains of London cab drivers with those of non-cab drivers investigated whether experience was associated with differences in the brain.

💡 Memory Hook

Experience changes synapses

📖 5. Cortisol and Declarative Memory

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

• Newcomer concluded that elevated cortisol levels can impair verbal declarative memory.

🔄 Process — Newcomer's experiment compared three conditions—high-dose cortisol, low-dose cortisol, and placebo—and measured verbal declarative memory by the percentage of a prose passage recalled.

📌 The high-dose cortisol condition produced the poorest memory performance, the placebo condition produced the highest performance, and the low-dose condition produced an intermediate result.

Further detail

• Newcomer's research can be used to examine the concepts of perspective, causality, measurement, bias, and responsibility.

💡 Memory Hook

More cortisol, poorer recall

📖 6. Biological Bases of Memory

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Hippocampus : A brain structure that supports the transfer of short-term or transient memories into permanent long-term memory.
• Acetylcholine : A neurotransmitter that supports the formation of memory.

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

• After HM had his hippocampus removed during surgery, Brenda Milner found that his digit span, conversation, and implicit or procedural memory for skills remained functional despite impaired memory function.

• Martinez and Kesner found in rats using a Y-shaped maze that blocking acetylcholine receptors on the postsynaptic neuron made rats slowest to find food, increasing acetylcholine made them fastest, and uninjected rats were intermediate.

Further detail

• Suzanne Corkin used MRI in the 1990s to investigate HM's brain and found that the tissue removed during surgery was less extensive than Scoville had originally estimated.

💡 Memory Hook

Hippocampus transfers; acetylcholine forms

📖 7. Cognitive Load and Technology

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Cognitive load theory : Distinguishes intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load.

📝 Essential Points

• Research by Rosen, Carrier, and Cheever examined the correlation between high Facebook use and lower grade point average.

• Sanchez conducted research on gaming and cognitive ability.

📖 8. Research Methods and Examination

📝 Essential Points

★ Must-know

🔄 Process — The data and analysis component covers data collection, methods, sampling, statistical application, and thematic analysis, and it is directly examined in Paper 3 with HL extensions and contexts.

Further detail

📌 Paper 1A contains two short-answer questions of ten minutes each, selected from two of the three content areas, with each question worth four marks.

• The course uses qualitative research by Caroline Howarth as homework review material.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Memory Research Comparisons

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. The method of loci is also known as the memory palace technique.
2. The recency effect should not be confused with the longer-term strengthening associated with spaced rehearsal.
3. A cognitive process is not defined by visible behaviors, although behaviors such as frowning or yawning may provide indicators.
4. Neuroplasticity concerns brain change in response to experience, not only changes caused by pathogens, trauma, or ageing.
5. The low-dose condition was neither the best nor the worst memory outcome.
6. The hippocampus supports memory transfer but is not required for every type of memory.
7. HM's preserved procedural memory shows that hippocampal damage does not eliminate all memory systems.