What College Teachers Should Know About Memory

and Attention

MICHELLE MILLER

CO-CHAIR, FIRST YEAR LEARNING INITIATIVE

PROFESSOR, NAU DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

DIRECTOR, NAU COURSE REDESIGN INITIATIVES .

Memory Theory

Working memory

Multistore model/verbal WM

7+- 1?

Attention

the key to memory

Memory without attention?

Change Blindness

www.viscog.com

Daniel J. Simons

See also: Rensink, O’Regan, & Clark,

1997

Simons & Ambinder, 2005

Effortful, attentive practice:

Useful

Passive exposure: Not so much

Observing examples isn’t enough –

students need explicit explanation and

multiple opportunities to practice

Prior knowledge drives the

acquisition of new knowledge

(also, this is one of the main mechanisms of

expertise)

What does this actually mean?

An example

Basketball Memory Case Study

List of 20 top NBA players*

* From Insidehoops.com

Bill Russell Tim Duncan Jerry West Magic Johnson Wilt Chamberlain Moses Malone Hakeem Olajuwon Julius Erving Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant

Bob Pettit Elgin Baylor Kevin Garnett Charles Barkley Larry Bird Karl Malone Lebron James Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Oscar Robertson Shaquille O'Neal

Experts have better memories –

primarily because of rich,

meaningfully organized existing

knowledge.

1. They can organize incoming

information much more strategically

2. They have more cues for retrieval

It pays to know what students know

– before you add to what they

know.

Forget about traditional concepts of

short-term memory.

It’s not relevant to the vast majority of classroom

practice.

BUT: Working memory is

somewhat relevant to design of

learning activities.

Not in the sense of seven plus or minus

one…just keep an eye on competing demands

for cognitive resources.

Pay a lot of attention to the testing

and spacing effects

AND: Consider the reasons we

remember things in the first place

(and try to take advantage of those reasons)

Suggested Strategies

Strategy 1: Ask Students to

Respond

Strategy 2: Promote Practice and

Automaticity

Strategy 3: Stay Within Working

Memory and Attention Limits

Strategy 4: Discourage Divided

Attention

Strategy 5: Harness the Testing

Effect

Strategy 6: Encourage Spaced

Study

Strategy 7: Tie In to What Students

Know

Strategy 8: Tie In to What

Students Care About

Strategies, collected…

• Strategy 1: Ask Students to Respond

• Strategy 2: Promote Practice and Automaticity

• Strategy 3: Stay Within Working Memory and Attention

Limits

• Strategy 4: Discourage Divided Attention

• Strategy 5: Harness the Testing Effect

• Strategy 6: Encourage Spaced Study

• Strategy 7: Tie In to What Students Know

• Strategy 8: Tie In to What Students Care About

Thank you – and keep up the good work!

MICHELLE MILLER

michelle.miller@nau.edu

PROFESSOR, NAU DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

DIRECTOR, NAU COURSE REDESIGN INITIATIVES

http://nau.academia.edu/MichelleMiller .

References and recommended

reading

Ambrose, S., Bridges, M., DiPietro, M., and Lovett, M. (2010). How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Atkinson, R.C. and Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, Volume 2, edited by K. W. Spence and J. T. Spence, 89-105. New York: Academic Press.

Baddeley, A. D. (1998). Human Memory: Theory and Practice. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chabris, C., and Simon, D. (2010). The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. New York: Crown.

Chickering, A., and Ehrmann, S. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE Bulletin, October, pp. 3-6.

Cowan, N.(2010). The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 51-57.

Dickey, M.D. (2005). Engaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53, 67-83.

Mayer, R. (2009 ). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, M.D., Brauer, E., and Shaber, J. (2011). Getting to Carnegie Hall: Novel timed homework practice to develop basic circuit analysis skills. Paper presented by E. Brauer, Annual Conference & Exposition, American Society for Engineering Education.

Miller, M.D. (2009) What the science of cognition tells us about instructional technology. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 41, 71-74

Miller, M.D. (2011). What college teachers should know about memory: A perspective from cognitive psychology. College Teaching, 59, 117-122.

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. and Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Simons, D.J., & Ambinder, M.S. (2005). Change blindness: Theory and consequences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 44-48.

Nickerson, R.S., & Adams, M.J. (1979). Long-term memory for a common object. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 287-307.

Willingham, D. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.