PSY 3109 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Motivation, Memory, Cognitive Dissonance
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSY 3109
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Review of Study Skills
Goal: Long-term retention and real understanding
Practice Testing (testing-enhanced learning):
• Repeatedly generating info leads to increased memory for that info
• Practice tests can be essay style or multiple choice (but essay-style is superior)
• Test yourself on key concepts; help you commit the info to LTM; also shows you what you
do not yet know
Distributed Practice:
• Spread out your studying; 4 sessions of 30 minutes spread out over a few days is better than
1 session of 2 hours
• Cramming leads to short term retention; distributed practice lead to long term retention
• Take time each week to review key concepts from that week and previous weeks
• Each week answer "what was the most important message from this week?" and define any
key terms
Interleaved Practice:
• Massed practice would be (for example) doing a block of addition problems, then block of
subtraction, then multiplication, and then division
• Interleaved practice would be doing a mix of them all in the same block
• Won’t feel like you are learning as quickly, but you are learning for long term
• Needs more research to understand parameters
Elaborative Interrogation:
• The process of explaining why a fact is true
• Generate answers to questions of why and how
• Even if you don't get the why part right, you are more likely to remember the fact
Self-explanation:
• Involves explaining how new info is related to info that you already know
• Ask yourself questions such as: "what does this sentence mean to me?"
Both Elaborative Interrogation and Self-Explanation encourage you to think deeply and make
connections, leading to long term retention
Rereading:
• Can be helpful when you need to recall info but it often doesn’t help enhance understanding
of what you read
• Benefits are not long lasting
Highlighting:
• Really isn't helpful on its own (some evidence that it can interfere with our ability to make
connections across concepts in a chapter)
• Use as step one and then go back and test yourself on the info
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
*Summary of Effectiveness in Slides
Test Anxiety:
• ¼ students have test anxiety
• more anxious = poorer performance
• not a proxy for poor ability
Working Memory:
• Central Executive: attentional control system- limited capacity
o Phonological Loop: verbal rehearsal system- limited capacity (The inner voice)
o Visio-spatial sketchpad: spatial and visual information storage system- limited
capacity (The inner eye)
▪ All necessary for studying
• Negative thoughts and ruminations occupy working memory and cause poor performance
Expressive Writing:
• High/Low test anxiety
• ------------------------------------------------→
• Fall Winter Spring *EW Finals
• ½ told to write and ½ told to sit quiet
• Removing negative thoughts from mind and putting them on paper would free up your
memory to improve your test outcome
• The people who wrote about the test did better in the high test anxiety group and in the low
group there was no difference
• Why does it matter that the low one shows no difference?
o The issue didn't’t exist in the first place so there was nothing to fix or improve
• Expressive writing won’t hurt so you might as well do it
Reappraisal:
• The way you think about a situation
• Challenge → beneficial physiological arousal and better performance
• Threat → detrimental physiological arousal and decreased performance
Mindfulness:
• Focused/deep breathing
• Breathing into your belly and counting your breathes, decreasing physiological arousal and
you are not thinking about the negative thoughts which is beneficial
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Distributed practice: spread out your studying; 4 sessions of 30 minutes spread out over a few days is better than. Interleaved practice: massed practice would be (for example) doing a block of addition problems, then block of subtraction, then multiplication, and then division. Interleaved practice would be doing a mix of them all in the same block: won"t feel like you are learning as quickly, but you are learning for long term, needs more research to understand parameters. Elaborative interrogation: the process of explaining why a fact is true, generate answers to questions of why and how, even if you don"t get the why part right, you are more likely to remember the fact. Involves explaining how new info is related to info that you already know: ask yourself questions such as: "what does this sentence mean to me?" Both elaborative interrogation and self-explanation encourage you to think deeply and make connections, leading to long term retention.
