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Information Processing

The Three-stage Model of Information Processing

Sensory Memory

Working Memory

Long-term Memory

Individual Differences in Information Processing

Summary Key Concepts Case Studies: Re

ﬂect and Evaluate

Applications to Teaching

Helping Students Pay Attention

Helping Students Store and Retrieve Information Effectively

Assumptions of the Information Processing Approach

Outline Learning Goals

Describe the assumptions that underlie information processing theory.

Describe the steps in the three-stage model of information processing, and discuss memory capacity and

duration at each stage in the model.

Contrast the effectiveness of rehearsal and encoding strategies for storing information in long-term memory.

Discuss the methods for getting and maintaining students

’ attention.

Summarize the instructional strategies for helping students store and retrieve information effectively.

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Information

Processing

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ASSUMPTIONS OF THE INFORMATION

PROCESSING APPROACH

Human beings are constantly attempting to make sense of their
environment and experiences. When we see, hear, smell, touch, or
taste something, our mind immediately tries to ﬁgure out what it is,
how it relates to previous experiences, and whether it is something
worth remembering. In this module, we will consider how we process
information, how we remember and forget, and how teachers can help
students better understand and remember critical information, skills,
and concepts. Before we examine how information processing works,
let’s ﬁrst consider some basic assumptions about how learning
occurs:

Cognitive processes inﬂuence learning. Cognitive psychologists

have offered many explanations of how people mentally process
information. When students have difﬁculty learning, it may
indicate ineffective or inappropriate cognitive processes. Teachers
must consider not only what students need to learn but also how
students can most effectively process the information they are
learning.

People are selective about what they pay attention to and learn.

Students are constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli and
information, so they need to be selective and focus only on what
they think is important. Teachers must help students make wise
choices about what concepts or information to pay attention to,
process, and save in memory.

Meaning is personally constructed by the learner and is

inﬂuenced by prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs.
Individuals take many separate bits of information and piece them
together to make sense of the world around them. Students bring
different sets of prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs with
them to the classroom, and these inﬂuence the way they interpret
new ideas and events. Although a teacher may present similar
information to all students during a lesson, individual students may
understand and remember that information differently.

Have you ever compared notes with someone and realized that
you each focused on different things that were said? Have you
ever reminisced with a family member or friend about something
that happened in the past and found that you remember different
details?

THE THREE-STAGE MODEL OF INFORMATION

PROCESSING

Information processing theory encompasses a variety of speciﬁc
theories about the process of human cognition (Bereiter, 1997;
Schunk, 2004). These theories challenge the behaviorist perspective
that all learning involves associations between stimuli and responses.
Cognitive theorists are concerned less with external behaviors than
with the internal mental processes that occur as learners select and
attend to features of the environment, transform and rehearse
information, relate new information to prior knowledge, and organize
knowledge to make it meaningful (Mayer, 1996).

While many different theories attempt to explain human memory

and learning, the most common are information processing
approaches (Ashcraft, 2006). Early information processing theories
compared human learning to the way computers process information
(Atkinson & Schiffrin, 1968; Broad-bent, 1958; Newell & Simon,
1972). Like a computer, the mind takes in information, performs
operations on it to change its form (encoding), stores it, and retrieves
it when needed. Figure 11.1 illustrates

Behavioral learning theories: See page 160.

Overview of the Information Processing Model

Input

Perception and attention

Information is lost from the system.

Sensory memory

Working memory

Long-term memory

Retrieval

Storage

Input

Figure 11.1: Three-Stage Model of Information Processing.

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Classroom Stimuli.
During a typical lecture, sensory memory is bombarded with huge amounts of
data.

the three-stage information processing model, which suggests that our
memories undergo three stages of processing: sensory memory,
working memory, and long-term memory.

Sensory Memory

As you sit in a classroom, your sensory memory registers countless
bits of data, including the ﬁrmness of the chair you’re sitting in
(touch), the perfume someone nearby is wearing (smell), the sound of
chalk against the blackboard (hearing), the outﬁt your instructor is
wearing (sight), and so on. If you were interviewed later in the day,
would you remember all these details? Of course not. Not all of this
information is perceived at a conscious level. You ignore some
stimuli, give others cursory attention, and examine relatively few in
depth.

As the ﬁrst stop in the information processing system, sensory

memory holds ﬂeeting sensory data that we register (e.g., the smell of
perfume) but do not yet process. Sensory memory has an unlimited
capacity to hold information in a raw form—exactly how we sensed it
(visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) and not yet interpreted. However, the
duration of sensory memory is extremely limited. Visual information
lasts for only one second, auditory information only two or three
seconds. One classic study by George Sperling (1960) showed that
human beings have a very ﬂeeting photographic memory (iconic
memory). While our eyes can register an incredibly detailed amount
of visual information, that mental picture decays very quickly.
Auditory stimuli, held in echoic memory, appear to be similarly
short-lived (Cowan, 1988; Lu, Williamson, & Kaufman, 1992). The
onslaught of incoming information interferes with and quickly
replaces the existing sensory data. If the mind does not perceive the
sensory information as noteworthy, it is immediately discarded, never
reaching the next stage in the memory system. Our ﬂeeting sensory
memory is actually advantageous. If every sensory stimulus in the
environment commanded our full attention, our mental processes
would become so bogged down that we couldn’t function effectively.

To manage the constant barrage of data, we pay attention to some

things and ignore others. We might intentionally turn our attention to
searching for a friend we have lost in a crowded cafeteria or to
scanning our cluttered desk for a pencil. But sometimes stimuli seem
to seek us out—something about a particular stimulus draws our
attention to it. Advertisers clearly recognize what qualities of stimuli
attract attention and capitalize on that information in selling their
products. Humans use at least six criteria to determine the amount of
attention particular stimuli deserve (Ormrod, 1995):
1. Size: large things.

2. Intensity: bright and loud stimuli.
3. Novelty: new and unusual things.
4. Incongruity: things that don’t make sense within a given context.

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5. Emotion: stimuli with strong emotional attachments.

6. Personal signiﬁ cance: stimuli personally important to us.
Attention determines which stimuli will receive further processing.

What kinds of things attract and hold your attention in the
classroom? Can you think of certain classes during which your
mind has wandered easily?

Working Memory

Once we pay attention to a stimulus, we transfer its information to our
working memory, where the information is put to use. Our working
memory processes information from sensory memory, maintains new
information in a heightened state of activity, and retrieves
task-relevant information from long-term memory so that we can
work with it, as when we recall a formula to use during an exam
(Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Working memory can be understood as
an active system that includes a central executive and three assistants:
the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic
buffer, as shown in Figure 11.2 (Baddeley, 2001; Baddeley & Hitch,
1974). The central executive acts as the information supervisor
within working memory, focusing attention on what is deemed
important, integrating information from both sensory and long-term
memory, selecting what strategies to use to process information, and
planning and organizing complex behavior (Carlson & Moses, 2001;
Willingham, 2004).

Individuals are unable to process two verbal tasks or two auditory

tasks at the same time; however, it sometimes is possible for
individuals to perform tasks that require different systems. For
example, it is possible to listen to music while reading a book. Alan
Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed the existence of the
phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad to explain these
distinct processes. The phonological loop contains an acoustic code
that stores auditory information for a few seconds as well as a
rehearsal system that allows individuals to repeat phonological
information over and over to extend its availability for use within
working memory and increase the chances of remembering it. The
visuospatial sketchpad temporarily stores and allows rehearsal of
visual and spatial information. The episodic buffer, the newest
addition to this model, is a temporary storage system that integrates
information from the visuospatial sketchpad, the phonological loop,
and long-term memory (LTM) into a single representation (Baddeley,
2000).

CAPACITY AND DURATION

In contrast to the unlimited capacity of sensory memory, working
memory holds only ﬁve to nine chunks of data at a time (Miller,
1956). This ﬁnding was considered the standard for more than 50
years, but more recent research suggests that it is not the exact
number of items that inﬂuences recall but how many items we have
time to rehearse before the information fades. For example, if
someone ﬂashed a list of words on a computer screen, we would be

able to remember more one-syllable words,

Central executive

Information

Processing

Module 11 :

Visuospatial sketchpad

Phonological loop

Episodic buffer

LTM Language

Visual semantics

Episodic

Figure 11.2: Baddeley

’s Model of Working Memory.

Source: Redrawn from

ﬁgure retrieved from

http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/ PSYbaddeley2000.html, copyright
© 2004, Derek J. Smith. Based on a black-and-white original in
Baddeley (2000, p. 421; Figure 1). Reprinted by permission of Derek
Smith.

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like hat, than polysyllabic words, like opportunity, because we can
process shorter words faster (Baddeley, 1999; Byrnes, 2001).

The concept of working memory has proved useful, but it cannot

account for complex cognitive activities such as language
comprehension, for which greater amounts of data must be available
than what can be processed within a few seconds. In recent years,
researchers have introduced active long-term memory models (ALTM)
to address this issue (Oberauer, 2002, 2005; Woltz & Was, 2007).
These models have several ideas in common:
  1. Working memory can include memory processes that are outside of
our conscious awareness.    2. Some information in working memory is

more readily available than other information.

3. Our capacity for processing information in working memory
changes based on the degree of memory activation (how recently the
information has been in use).

Information in working memory typically is lost within 5 to 20

seconds; however, we can extend the duration of information in
working memory indeﬁnitely if we actively use it (Anderson, 1995;
Baddeley, 2001). When we stop thinking about something, that
information leaves working memory and may be either discarded or
stored in long-term memory. Items can be displaced from working
memory when incoming information interferes with it or when our
attention to it wavers, as when a secondary task distracts us (Davelaar,
Goshen-Gottstein, Ashkenazi, Haarmann, & Usher, 2005).

ENCODING PROCESSES

Encoding is a process in which we modify or reformat information to
prepare it for long-term storage. Some encoding occurs automatically,
freeing the mind to process other information that requires conscious
effort. For example, brushing your teeth is handled by automatic
processing. Once tooth brushing has become a daily habit, you no
longer need to consciously think about it, enabling you at the same
time to plan what to pack for lunch or mentally review for an
upcoming quiz. Other information or skills require effortful
processing, which involves conscious effort and attention. For
example, learning to read is an effortful process whereby beginning
readers focus attention on basic reading skills such as ―sounding
out‖ words, often at the expense of comprehending what they’ve read.
More complex tasks require more effortful processing and more
working memory capacity, so working memory can easily become
overloaded. Fortunately, over time, effortful processing becomes
automatic process-ing—otherwise our ability to learn new information
and skills might be considerably limited.

Individuals can retain new information by rehearsal, or

repeating the information over and over to themselves. You may do
this when you’ve just been introduced to someone and are trying to
commit that person’s name to memory. Unless it is rehearsed, verbal
information may be forgotten quickly (Peterson & Peterson, 1959).

Rehearsal can take two different forms:

Maintenance rehearsal involves repeating information over and

over so it can be maintained indeﬁnitely in working memory.

If you are assigned a new locker with a combination
number, you might repeat that number over and over as you try to
memorize it.

Elaborative rehearsal involves connecting new information you

are trying to remem-

Automatic Processing.
With practice, skills like brushing teeth become automatic, freeing up working
memory to concentrate on other things.

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Information

Processing

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ber to prior knowledge. When we create passwords for our
computers    and    Internet    access,    we    often    create    strings of
digits related to important dates in our lives (birthdays and
anniversaries of relatives) that    are    part    of    our    long-term
memory.    This    strategy transforms the stimuli from a
meaningless string of digits into something that has contextual
meaning.

Individuals can retain new information by using mnemonic

devices, aids designed to help us remember information by making it
more    meaningful.    Mnemonic devices    include    strategies    such as
acronyms,    chain    mnemonics, keyword method, method of loci, and
verbal mediation, as described in Table 11.1 Mnemonics are most
useful for students when they have trouble ﬁnding relationships
between new material and their prior knowledge or when information
to be learned does not seem to have a logical, organized structure.

Individuals can also retain information by using various organizational strategies. For example:

Chunking: grouping individual bits of information in a

meaningful way. Consider the following two sets of numbers:
6 1 3 9 7 5 2 4 8 and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Which set seems easier to remember? You probably said the
second set. The ﬁrst set challenges us to remember the individual
numbers, but we immediately recognize the second set as the
digits 1 through 9, a chunk we can easily remember. The mind
actively searches for meaningful patterns (Lichtenstein & Brewer,
1980). For example, confronted with the list of words couch,
orange, banana, dog, pear, rug, pineapple, lamp, horse, rat, table,
and sheep, an individual might attempt to remember the words by
organizing them into the categories furniture, fruit, and animals.
Chunking

Effortful Processing.
Some tasks such as reading, especially when they initially are learned,
require intense concentration.

TA B L E 1 1 .1

Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic

Description

Acronym A form of abbreviation, such as

“ROY G BIV” for the

colors of the rainbow Chain mnemonics Connecting items to be

memorized in a jingle, such as

“i before e, except after c” for a

common spelling rule Keyword method Associating sounds or

images with concepts, such as an English student learning Spanish

who imagines a cow on vacation to remember vaca, the Spanish

word for cow

Loci method Associating items that need to be memorized with

locations in a familiar setting, for example, for memorizing a

grocery list, picturing items on the list sitting around your house:

milk in the refrigerator, cereal on the table, pretzels on a recliner,

etc.

Verbal mediation Using a word or phrase to connect two pieces of information, such as

“The principal is my pal” to remember that
the word for the school of

ﬁcial ends in -pal,

not -ple

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Kingdom

Figure 11.3: Hierarchies As Memory Boosters. Organizing information into a hierarchy such as this one makes it two to three
times more likely that the information will be remembered.

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Carnivora

Family

Felidae

Genus

Panthera

Species

Panthera pardus

can enhance meaning and increase efﬁciency. When a child is ﬁrst learning the alphabet, each letter represents a
discrete piece of data to remember. Once the child has memorized the alphabet, the ABCs are only one chunk of
information, freeing up processing space within working memory.

Hierarchies: dividing broad concepts into narrower concepts and facts. When information is organized into

hierarchical groups, as shown in Figure 11.3, it is remembered two to three times better (Gordon, 1969).

Visual imagery: constructing mental pictures (drawing, modeling, or graphing). Research has demonstrated that

people are better able to remember visual images than words. For example, think of what you know about

Abraham Lincoln. Is it easier for you to retrieve a visual image of Lincoln or verbal facts about the president,
such as the years of his term in ofﬁce or his place of birth? When words and pictures are combined during
learning, the pictures continue to be easier to remember than the words (Roedigger, 1997).

Think about the memory strategies we

’ve just discussed. Which ones have you used? How effective have

they been as you

’ve tried to commit information to memory?

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Characteristics of Each Component of the Information Processing System

Sensory memory

Working memory Long-term memory

TA B L E 1 1 . 2

Information

Processing

Module 11 :

Five to twenty seconds unless actively used; then it can be held inde

ﬁnitely.

Students need opportunities for repetition and review as they process new information and need to connect new
information to prior knowledge.

Duration One second for visual information.

Two to four seconds for auditory information.

If students are to retain information, they must pay attention to information, and teachers must direct their attention to
the most important ideas or concepts.

Capacity Unlimited. Five to nine bits of data. Unlimited. Form of storage Raw form in which the information was

sensed (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.).

Actively processed data from sensory memory and long-term memory.

Declarative, procedural, episodic, or conceptual knowledge of various forms (visual, auditory).
Relatively permanent.

Implications for teachers

Effective use of long-term memory requires that students encode the information in a meaningful way for long-term
storage and effectively use retrieval strategies to recall the information when needed.

Long-term Memory

Long-term memory, the third memory stage in the information processing system, enables us to store huge
amounts of information and retain it for days, weeks, or years (see Table 11.2).

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

Our minds store both explicit and implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge refers to all the information we are
consciously aware of and use, including academic information like multiplication facts or grammar rules. We are not
as aware of implicit knowledge, which may involve conditioned responses (habits), memories of common routines
and procedures, or the triggering of related concepts stored in long-term memory. Implicit information can inﬂuence
our behavior or thoughts even if we are not conscious of it. Say, for example, that a snake crosses your path. You
may not consciously remember any previous incidents with snakes, yet an implicit memory of such an event may
cause you to respond with fear.

Within the explicit/implicit dichotomy, people have four types of knowledge (Byrnes, 2001;

Sadoski & Paivio, 2001):
1. Episodic knowledge is the memory of a certain episode or event that you have experienced, sometimes referred

to as autobiographical memory (Shimamura, 1995).

2. Declarative knowledge, also called semantic knowledge, is a compilation of verbal information or facts.

3. Procedural knowledge, or knowing how to do something, is a compilation of all the skills and habits you have

formed (Byrnes, 2001).

4. Conceptual knowledge indicates why something is the case. It reﬂects an understanding of declarative and

procedural information (Byrnes, 2001). It is one thing to know a declarative fact (―The sky is blue‖) and another
to understand why the fact is true.

HOW MEMORIES ARE STORED

We know that explicit and implicit knowledge are associated with different areas of the brain (Ash-craft, 2006), but
we know relatively little about the brain’s ﬁling system. We do know that mental records stored in long-term
memory can be encoded in more than one format (Anderson, 1995; Paivio, 1971). For example, suppose you are
told ―If you add two things to two others, you have four things in all.‖ You can represent this statement mentally as:

Conditioned responses: See page 162.

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2 + 2 = 4

Dual coding theory suggests that information is remembered best when it is encoded in both visual and verbal forms

(Kulhavy, Lee, & Caterino, 1985; Winn, 1991).

Theorists have proposed several approaches to explain how the various pieces of information in long-term

memory may be connected. Let’s look at two of them:

Network theory suggests that information can be stored as a proposition, the smallest unit of knowledge that can

be judged true or false, and that propositions that share information can be linked in what is called a propositional
network. Consider the sentence ―Sarah is wearing my new raincoat.‖ This communicates two linked propositions:
(1) Sarah is wearing my raincoat, and

(2) the raincoat is new. Cognitive psychologists have suggested that most information is stored and represented in
these propositional networks, although the networks are not part of our conscious awareness. One task, such as
facial recognition, may involve several levels of association and processing within a network, as shown in Figure
11.4. Recollection of one piece of information can activate recall of related or linked information in the network
in a process known as spreading activation (Anderson, 2005).

Schema theory suggests that information that ﬁts easily into an existing schema, or conceptual framework, is

more easily understood and remembered (Anderson & Bower, 1973). Figure 11.5 illustrates a schema for the
concept ―wave.‖ A script, or event schema, is a pattern of representing the typical sequence of events in an
everyday situation (e.g., the steps involved in getting ready for school each morning). Another type of schema,
story grammar, helps students understand and remember stories by presenting a familiar structure to
guide them through the stories (e.g., the pattern in a typical detective mystery).

We’ve considered how information is put into long-term memory, yet

information is useful only if we can access it when we need it.

HOW MEMORIES ARE RETRIEVED

How do we get information out of long-term memory?
And why do we easily remember certain (sometimes trivial) information and
struggle to remember other (more important) things?

Facts or procedures that are practiced on a regular basis and learned well

come to mind easily when we try to remember them; information not practiced
or used often is harder to retrieve (Byrnes, 2001). Information in our long-term
memory has an activation level that indicates its current degree of availability at
a conscious level. Information in a high state of activation is available for
immediate use. Other information, in a low state of activation, idles in long-term
memory, awaiting future retrieval (Anderson, 1995). Retrieval cues, or hints
about where to look for a particular piece of information, can be used to move
information from a low to a high state of activation (Watkins, 1979). Retrieval
cues that jog our memories can be in any sensory format (e.g., a familiar scent, a
visual image, a sound). For example, if asked to recall details

Figure 11.4: Processes Involved in Facial Recognition. Information retrieved in response to seeing a face is stored in a complex
network spanning multiple areas of the brain (Paller et al., 2003).

Source: http://edoc.huberlin.de/dissertationen/ wild-wall-nele-2004-05-28/HTML/Wildwall1_html _m4e4ad8f6.png.

Expression analysis

Structural encoding

Facial speech analysis

Directed visual processing

View-centered descriptions

Expression-independent descriptions

Face recognition units

Person identity nodes

Cognititve system

Name generation

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Figure 11.5: Concept Map for

“Wave.” A schema for “wave” might include many of the elements shown on this concert map.

Waves

are periodic

that allow for

which have

energy transport

disturbances wavelength

vacuum

that can travel in a

amplitude

which determines

medium

such as intensity

such as

radio waves, light waves, and microwaves

sound waves in air

rogue waves in water

seismic waves in rock

high low

about the elementary school you attended as a child, you might ﬁnd that you remember few details. However, if you
visit the school in person, you might be ﬂooded with sights, sounds, and smells that trigger memories from your
elementary years. Retrieval cues also are related to context, the setting or circumstances around a particular place,
feeling, or event (Godden & Baddeley, 1975). For example, the hallways and classrooms of your elementary school
provide a physical context for your memories. Emotional contexts also may facilitate long-term memory storage and
retrieval. When we have a strong emotional reaction to something, the event is processed at a deeper level, and our
memory of that information or event is longer lasting (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorf, 2002; Pintrich, 2003). Can you
recall exactly where you were and what you were doing on September 11, 2001?

We use retrieval cues when we’re trying to match previously encoded information with the needs of our current

situation (Brown, Preece, & Hulme, 2000), a process that requires us to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant
information stored in long-term memory (Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Some tasks require that we remember the gist
or general meaning of something previously learned, while others demand recall of very speciﬁc information
(Koustaal & Cavendish, 2006). Recall is the ability to retrieve information not in conscious awareness, as when a
student is asked to write an essay during an exam. Recognition tasks, such as identifying items on a multiple-choice
test, contain retrieval cues and require individuals only to identify items previously learned. Recall and
recognition tasks place different demands on the memory system. In one study of high school graduates, Harry
Bahrick and colleagues found that people who had graduated 25 years earlier could not recall the names of many of

their old classmates, but they could recognize 90% of their pictures and names from a high school yearbook
(Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975). As teachers plan classroom assessments, they need to be aware of the
cognitive demands of different types of memory tasks.

FORGETTING

Suppose you studied for a test last night and did well on the test this morning, but next week, in a surprise quiz,

Importance of practice: See page 111 and page 231.

Recognition vs. Recall:
One study showed that people who had graduated 25 years earlier could not recall the names of many of their old classmates, but
they could recognize 90% of their pictures and names from a high school yearbook.

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you can’t recall the same information. What happened to the
information? Cognitive psychologists offer three main reasons for
why we forget things:

1. Encoding failure. Failure to encode the information successfully
means that it may never have reached long-term memory storage.

2. Storage decay. Memory of new information fades quickly and
then levels off in a process often referred to as decay. Psychologist
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) called this the ―forgetting curve.‖
Subsequent studies have conﬁrmed Ebbinghaus’s ﬁndings:
Forgetting initially is very rapid but levels off with time (Bahrick,
1984; Wixted & Ebbesen, 1991).

3. Retrieval failure. Stored information may be unavailable due to
retrieval failure, which occurs when we are certain we have learned
a piece of information but cannot pull up the mental record of it.

Retrieval failure has many potential causes. A common cause is

interference, which occurs when the learning of some items
interferes with the retrieval of others. Interference can happen
proactively or retroactively. Proactive interference occurs when
French words you learned in middle school (i.e., prior knowledge) get
mixed up with Spanish words you are learning as a high school
student. Retroactive interference occurs in the opposite direction. If
you have just learned some new steps in a dance class and then try to
rehearse steps you learned last month, the new routine may interfere
with your memory of the steps you learned previously. In a form of
retrieval failure called reconstruction error, we may recall only
limited pieces of information about a topic or event and then, without
realizing it, ﬁll in the information gaps with assumptions or guesses
based on other things we know. The information we’ve retrieved in
this way is incomplete and potentially inaccurate.

Have you ever had the experience of knowing you learned
something but not being able to dig it out of your memory when
you needed it? What might have caused the memory failure?

Individual Differences in Information Processing

Two individuals witnessing the same event might pay attention to

different aspects, encode the information in different ways, and
recount the event very differently when asked later what they
remember. During the information processing, they are engaging in a
constructive process based on their own interests, skills, and
experiences. In a classroom context, teachers must understand that
students respond to a lesson or an activity in different ways. Their
responses are inﬂuenced by factors such as gender, age, and cultural
background. Let’s consider some of these inﬂuences at various stages
of information processing.

SENSORY MEMORY

Developmental differences affect the speed with which sensory
information is transmitted, as well as the speed with which visual
information is extracted for interpretation (LeBlanc, Muise, &
Blanchard, 1992). This means that younger children process
information more slowly than older children and therefore lose more
information before it can be encoded and retained in memory. Our
ability to ﬁlter stimuli, called selective attention, increases with age,
and as a result older children also are better at focusing on what’s
important (Bjorklund, 1995). Girls may have a slight advantage over
boys in keeping their attention focused and in performing speciﬁc
kinds of memory tasks, such as remembering items in a list or
recalling details of life events (Das, Naglieri, & Kirby, 1994; Halpern
& LaMay, 2000).

WORKING MEMORY

Young children seem to have less working memory capacity than
older children and adults. Two factors may explain this
developmental difference. First, older individuals simply may process
information faster and thus can retrieve more of it before it decays.
Second, as novices, young children may be encountering information
for the ﬁrst time, so they initially process things in an effortful way
that consumes more space (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1985). Over time,
children develop the ability to resist interference from extraneous
information and to inhibit the intrusion of task-inappropriate thoughts
that might interfere with working memory (Dempster, 1993; Engle &
Kane, 2004; Harnishfeger, 1995). They also gain more experience
with many types of knowledge, and their greater knowledge base
allows them to process information more efﬁciently in working
memory. The more a person already knows about something, the
better he or she is able to understand, organize, and retain new
information (Engle, Nations, & Cantor, 1990; Kuhura-Kojima &
Hatano, 1989).

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197

DIFFERENCES IN STRATEGY USE

Children as young as 18–24 months show some rehearsal-like
behaviors when processing information during play (DeLoache,

Cassidy, & Brown, 1985). During middle childhood, rehearsal
strategies become more effective. Older children use a wide variety of
strategies, whereas young children typically use maintenance
rehearsal (Ornstein, Naus, & Liberty, 1975). Training children and
adolescents to develop and use strategies does not guarantee that they
will spontaneously use these skills when learning or transfer them to
new situations.

Several developmental limitations can affect strategy use.

Attention resources are more limited in younger children. A limited
and less organized knowledge base reduces a child’s ability to chunk
information in working memory (Chi, 1978). Furthermore,
subroutines (simpler procedures necessary to perform more complex
tasks) are not yet automatic. For example, in math, it is important for
students to memorize basic addition and subtraction facts until
knowledge of them is retrieved quickly and easily. When the
addition-facts subroutine reaches a level of automaticity, students
can complete complex math problems more efﬁciently. Until then,
completing each problem will require more sustained attention and
effort (Anderson, 2005).

Cultural differences also may impact the degree of experience

students have with different types of learning tasks and strategies. For
example, students from North America and Asia are likely to have
had experience learning lists, whereas students from certain cultures
in Africa, Australia, and Central America may have had more
experience recalling oral histories or spatial locations (Purdie &
Hattie, 1996; Rogoff, 2001, 2003).

APPLICATIONS TO TEACHING

Helping Students Pay Attention

Effective teachers use many strategies to arouse student interest in a
topic and maintain student attention throughout a lesson.

Plan for attention. Plan lessons with students’ developmental level

in mind. Students’ ability to attend to incoming information and to
identify what is most important changes over time. Plan to engage
students’ curiosity by bringing variety and novelty to the lesson (keep
in mind the features that attract attention, discussed earlier in this
module). Construct seating arrangements in a way that focuses
students’ attention on the teacher or on one another (depending on
what an activity requires). Seat easily distracted students near you.
Proximity to the teacher will help these students pay better attention
(Murray, 2006). Plan to minimize distractions in the room so they do
not interfere with learning.

Use attention signals. Develop a signal that tells students to stop

what they are doing and focus their attention on you (e.g., the sound
of chimes, a clapping pattern, a familiar tagline to begin a lesson).
During a lesson, direct students’
attention to the most important ideas or concepts and to why these are
important (Jensen, 1998). Students’ sensory    memories    are
bombarded    with huge    amounts    of    information,    and they    may
have    difﬁculty separating essential from nonessential data. Use
repetition to focus students’ attention on key ideas.

Keep students’ attention engaged.

Incorporate a variety of instructional methods into your lessons to
engage students in different ways. When possible, get students

physically involved with the lesson through role playing,
demonstrating, experimenting, or researching.    Encourage    students
to    interact with the content by having them take    notes,    create
concept    maps,    or draw diagrams. Ask students questions

Information

Processing

Module 11 :

Planning: See page 357.

Automaticity:

See page 235.

Signals for Attention.
Develop a signal that tells students to stop what they are doing and focus
their attention on you.

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cluster three

learning theories

about the material to direct their attention. Posing questions to the class, and to
speciﬁc students, can help students attend to pertinent information and begin to
process it (Bybee, 2002). In addition to giving verbal responses, have students
write their responses before sharing their thoughts with a small group or
with the entire class. This ensures that all students, not just a few, are attending
to the question. As a transition from one activity or subject to another, have
students write in a journal a question or summary about what was just learned or
discussed. This practice encourages students to attend to activities, discussions,
and lectures while they are occurring and leads to additional information
processing after they are ﬁnished (National Research Council, 2000).

Respect attentional limits. Read students’ body language and facial expressions to discern when they need a

change of pace. Provide frequent breaks from sedentary activities, especially when working with younger
children. If a lesson starts with several minutes of lecture or teacher demonstration, consider pausing to give students
the opportunity to discuss or practice new concepts or to work in collaborative groups to complete a task.

If you were to create a Top Ten List of

“Effective Ways to Get and Keep Students’ Attention,” what strategies

would make it onto your list?

Respect Attentional Limits. If students seem restless or bored during a lesson, a useful strategy is to pick up the pace, add some
variety, or get students physically engaged.

Engaging student interest: See page 274, page 279, and page 309.

Note-taking strategies: See page 224.

Helping Students Store and Retrieve Information Effectively

Skilled teachers know their content areas, but—perhaps even more important—they also know the kinds of teaching
activities that will help students understand the content for themselves. These teachers know what kinds of
difﬁculties students are likely to encounter, how to tap into students’ existing knowledge in order to make new
information meaningful, and how to assess their students’ progress (National Research Council, 2000). Table 11.3
reviews the encoding strategies discussed ear-

Encoding Strategies to Promote Storage in Long-term Memory

Strategy

How to use it Effectiveness

TA B L E 1 1 . 3

Rehearsal Drill and practice over and over. Least effective. This method is a good choice when

ﬁrst

encountering sensory data, but the information then needs to be processed in a
deeper way.

Elaboration Add to new information by helping

ﬁll in gaps in students’ knowledge.

Organization Provide links that connect new information to prior knowledge. Help students chunk information or

organize it into hierarchies.

Meaningful learning

Have students put information in their own words. Provide examples to enhance comprehension.

Effective. Information is interpreted and understood in terms of existing knowledge.

Effective if it results in a schema that ties the information together well.

Effective if meaningful inferences are drawn.

Visual imagery Provide visual aids such as photos, graphs, concept maps, and charts.

Using visuals to illustrate certain points can be very effective.

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199

Organization Gone Awry.

With permission from Harley Schwadron.

Information

Processing

Module 11 :

lier in this module. Let’s consider the teacher’s role in helping
students effectively encode information in various areas.

Organization. Individuals differ in their ability to organize

information and can be taught strategies that will assist them
(Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995). Instructional strategies that facilitate
organization include these (Mestre & Cocking, 2000; Murray, 2006):

Present information in a clear, logical way. Give students an

outline to follow, and provide a summary at the end of a lesson.

To help students see how information is related, provide visual

organizers such as concept maps, diagrams, and graphs.

Connect new information to students’ prior knowledge by

presenting analogies that relate topics to situations and concepts
that are familiar to the students and by activating prior knowledge
through questions, discussions, and review before introducing new
material.

Allow students time to organize their thoughts and responses by using appropriate wait time.

When teachers ask students a question in class, they typically wait
one second or less to get a response. When teachers extend their
wait time to three seconds or longer, they ﬁnd an increase in
student participation and a better quality of responses (Rowe,
1987).

Conceptual understanding. Experts in various disciplines organize

their problem solving around big ideas and are attentive to key
concepts (Bransford et al., 1988; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991).
Teachers can strengthen students’ conceptual understanding and help
students develop expertise in several ways:

Help students identify key concepts and recognize meaningful patterns.

Focus on meaning, not memorization.

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203

Middle School:

“Study Hall”

These questions refer to the case study on page 156.

1. Jamie does not seem to remember basic mathematical
principles taught the previous year in sixth grade. According to
information processing theory, what are three possible
explanations for his forgetting?

2. What strategies could Milos use to help increase Jamie

’s

conceptual understanding of the basic math concepts?
  3. What strategies could Milos use to help Jamie develop the
procedural knowledge necessary to complete the math problems?
  4. When Gladys works with Jasamine, she discovers that
Jasamine has not been writing down the homework assignments
for English class. How can writing down these assignments in a
daily planner help Jasamine?
  5. What strategies could Jasamine

’s classmate share to help

Jasamine complete her English homework successfully?

6. How might the examples Gladys gives Jasamine serve as retrieval cues for her?

High School:

“Bending the Rules”

These questions refer to the case study on page 158.

1. Jason has forgotten Dan

’s demonstration of how to complete

the assignment. Explain the role of attention in his forgetting.

2. What strategies could Dan implement to help focus students

’ attention during his lessons?

3. Jason recalls not doing well in history during middle school.
Assume he used maintenance rehearsal as his primary memory
strategy. Explain the limitations of this approach to Jason and offer
better ways to remember information for the long term.
4. What types of organizational strategies, consistent with
information processing, would you use to study for a history test?
Give speci

ﬁc examples.

5. How does Dan incorporate conceptual knowledge and episodic
knowledge into his history class? In what other ways can teachers
emphasize conceptual understanding in their classes?

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summary

201

Summary

Describe the assumptions that underlie information processing theory. (1) Because cognitive
processes in

ﬂuence learning, teachers must consider not only what students need to learn but also how

they can most effectively process the information they are learning.

(2) Individuals are selective about what they pay attention    to    and    learn.    Teachers    must    help
students make wise choices about what concepts to pay attention    to,    pro cess,    and    save    in
memory.    (3)    Students bring different sets of prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs with them to the
classroom, which in

ﬂuences the way they interpret new ideas and events. Although a teacher may

present similar information to    all    students    during    a    lesson,    individual    students may understand
and remember that information differently.
Describe    the    steps    in    the    three-stage    model    of    information processing, and discuss
memory capacity and duration at each stage in the model. The three-stage model states that memory
involves a sequence of three stages: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Raw
sensory data from the environment

ﬁrst enters sensory memory, where it is captured initially

ﬂeeting sense memory. The capacity of sensory memory is unlimited, but data are

held only brie

ﬂy. From there data can be processed into working memory, where

information is encoded for storage in long-term memory and later retrieval. Working memory
generally can hold

ﬁve to nine chunks of information for a duration of 5–20 seconds; however,

information can be held in working memory inde

ﬁnitely if it is actively being used. Long-term memory

seems to have an unlimited capacity and is relatively permanent, although dif

ﬁculties can impede

the retrieval of information stored in long-term memory.
Contrast the effectiveness of rehearsal and encoding strategies for storing information in
long-term memory. Maintenance rehearsal is a good choice when

ﬁrst encountering sensory data, but

the information then needs to be processed in a deeper way. Elaborative rehearsal, in which information
is interpreted based on prior knowledge, helps make the information meaningful    and    thus    more
memorable.    The    use    of    mnemonics lends a meaningful structure to information that does not have
its own easily remembered structure or connection to prior knowledge. Organizational strategies, such as
the use of chunking or hierarchies, can connect new information to prior knowledge. Research    suggests
that    visual    imagery    is    remembered more easily than words alone and that dual encoding in both

visual and auditory formats is most effective for long-term storage and retrieval.
Discuss the methods for getting and maintaining students

’ attention. It is vital that teachers

draw students

’ attention to important concepts, facts, or procedures to be learned and help students

discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information. Teachers need to consider ways to plan for
attention, use signals to direct students

’ attention at the beginning of and throughout the lesson, use a

variety of instructional methods to engage students, and respect students

’ attentional limits.

Summarize    the    instructional    strategies    for    helping students    store    and    retrieve
information    effectively. Teachers    must    emphasize    the    importance    of understanding classroom
material and must encourage students    to    make    connections    to    prior    knowledge, synthesize
information, organize ideas, actively apply new information in a meaningful context, and practice basic
skills to a level of automaticity in order to free up processing space for more complex thinking.

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Key Concepts

acronym activation level attention automaticity automatic processing central executive chain mnemonics chunking

conceptual knowledge context decay declarative knowledge effortful processing elaborative rehearsal encoding

episodic buffer

episodic knowledge explicit knowledge hierarchies implicit knowledge information processing theory interference

keyword method loci method long-term memory maintenance rehearsal mnemonic devices network theory

organizational strategies phonological loop proactive interference procedural knowledge

recall recognition tasks reconstruction error rehearsal retrieval cues retrieval failure retroactive interference schema

theory sensory memory spreading activation task analysis verbal mediation visual imagery visuospatial sketchpad

wait time working memory

Case Studies:

Refl ect and Evaluate

Early Childhood:

“Pinch”

These questions refer to the case study on page 152.
1. Why does Amber have the children clap at certain points during her story?

2. When the children are asked to compare today

’s story with the one from yesterday, what memory system(s) is

(are) being activated? Explain.

3. What does Rana do to focus the children

’s attention on her instructions for the art project? Why is this important?

4. How do the teachers help the children acquire procedural knowledge for the painting activity?
5. Emily has been reluctant to paint since she accidentally spilled paint on Billy

’s shoes. From an information

processing perspective, why might this incident be very memorable for Emily?

Elementary School:

“Silly Students”

These questions refer to the case study on page 154.
1. How did the cluster seating arrangement impact the attention level of Billy, Jason, Megan, and Sara?

2. Billy, Jason, Megan, and Sara receive low scores on the math quiz. What might explain their inability to

successfully retrieve the information they needed in order to answer the questions on the quiz?

3. What strategies could Aidan use to help his students organize their ideas in a meaningful way during his math

lesson?

4. Sara began to feel frustrated in trying to complete her math problems. What strategies could Aidan have used to

help her acquire the procedural knowledge necessary to successfully complete the problems?

5. Under what conditions would it have been appropriate for Aidan

’s students to use a calculator? How would the

use of a calculator affect the way they process information in working memory?

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203

Middle School:

“Study Hall”

These questions refer to the case study on page 156.

2. What strategies could Milos use to help increase Jamie

’s

conceptual understanding of the basic math concepts?
3. What strategies could Milos use to help Jamie develop the
procedural knowledge necessary to complete the math problems?
4. When Gladys works with Jasamine, she discovers that
Jasamine has not been writing down the homework assignments
for English class. How can writing down these assignments in a

daily planner help Jasamine?
5. What strategies could Jasamine

’s classmate share to help

Jasamine complete her English homework successfully?

6. How might the examples Gladys gives Jasamine serve as retrieval cues for her?

High School:

“Bending the Rules”

These questions refer to the case study on page 158.

1. Jason has forgotten Dan

’s demonstration of how to complete

the assignment. Explain the role of attention in his forgetting.

2. What strategies could Dan implement to help focus students

’ attention during his lessons?

ﬁc examples.

5. How does Dan incorporate conceptual knowledge and episodic
knowledge into his history class? In what other ways can teachers
emphasize conceptual understanding in their classes?

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