Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Human Learning and Cognition
Fall 2003
Questions - Week 10 Terry, Chapter 8 and Fauconnier Chapter 2
Terry (2000) Chapter 8 - Short-term Retention
1.What is short-term memory and how is it assessed? (Lee, Kyu-seon)
Short-term memory is recalling information which is acquired erewhile, and it lasts a few minutes at best under lab testing conditions. For example, to recall a counterpart's name in the conference people use their STM ,and looking for new phone number will be quickly forgotten, even before reaching the phone in the absence of rehearsal. It can be said that people will have a tremendous problems in daily life if short-term memory does not work properly. It has two important characteristics. first, short-term memory can contain a few items, "chunks" of information. Second, items remain in short-term memory around twenty seconds.(Miller 1956). It means that STM is limited both in its duration and its capacity. According to Brown-Peterson distractor task (1958), there are two reasons of rapid forgetting with distractor technique. First, the absence of rehearsal, and second reason seemed to occur in the absence of interference. First reason is really obvious, but second one needs to be proved. Interference referred to a particular theory in which forgetting was attributed to competition between similar memories. There are two types of interference which is proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive interference is information acquired prior to the formation of a target memory leads to forgetting of this memory. Retroactive interference is information presented after the formation of a target memory causes forgetting of that memory. since interference was believed to be primarily determined by similarity between competing memories, digit counting should not have caused retroactive interference with the recall of words or letters in experiment by Brown-Peterson. However, it depends on items to be memorized and interference.
Memory span is the measure of STM capacity. The span of immediate memory is defined as the longest sequence of items that can be recalled in correct order after a single presentation. An important determinant of memory span is the word-length effect: More items can be remembered when shorter words are the to-be-remembered items (Baddeley, Tomson, and Buchanan 1975). Memory span is unfixed so it can be increased with practice. Activity like Snowball game can be helpful for increasing memory span.
Even though there are a lot of researches on Short-term memory, the existence of STM is not clear. It might be considered as different type of long-term memory.
2. What are some characteristics of verbal STR and how does it transfer to long- term memory? (Ahn, SeungEun)
Terry, in his book, explains some characteristics of verbal short-term retention. These characteristics are those typically attributed to short-term memory, but it seems that they also apply to the phonological store in working memory. Usually in short-term memory, word, letters, or digits are remembered as they sound, as if they were being verbally rehearsed. Long-term memory, however, has been characterized as involving semantic encoding. That is, we remember the meaning or interpretation of a word rather than the exact word or its sound. This verbal-semantic distinction explains why we can sometimes recall a just heard sentence verbatim, but in recalling later from long-term memory we paraphrase the sentence into somewhat different words. For example, when you recall two or three words from STM, you memorize the word acoustically. On the other hand, when you retell an interesting story you heard two or three days ago, you don`t repeat the exact words but convey the gist of the story by paraphrasing it. Of course there are exceptions here. Short-term memory is facilitated by the meaningfulness of the to-be-remembered material. On the contrary, long-term memories are sometimes encoded acoustically, e.g. poems. The difference here also shows us the relation between the to-be-remembered material and the strategies people adopt.
Also, STM has a limited capacity to hold information. The span of STM is said to be limited to about seven items or a lot less than that. Here item is a unit already existing in long-term memory. Letters, digits, and words are each represented in permanent memory; each is an already known item. The way we can enlarge our limited span could be to increase the amount of information contained within each item. For example, the apparent capacity of memory span can be increased by parsing and encoding the material in terms of meaningful units, called chunks. When you memorize long numbers or letters, you can remember better by simply dividing them into smaller meaningful units. This chunking strategy can allow us to remember better. In short, STM capacity is indeed limited and enlargements of STM are often accomplished by recording items into more encompassing units. Short-term memory uses long-term memory. We can remember several items in STM when they are already represented somewhere in LTM.
In addition, short-tern memory is very short. Brown-Peterson task tells us that forgetting occurs after 15 to 30 seconds of distraction. On the contrary, information from long-term memories is fairly long. For instance, people usually remember their friends' names in their elementary school days after a long period of time. Forgetting from short-term memory was believed to be due to two reasons. One is spontaneous fading of the memory trace over time and the other is displacement of old items by new items. In forgetting, the distractors do not always cause loss of information from memory.
Then, how does STM transfer to LTM? When we decide we really need to remember something in permanent memory, we seem to process information in a certain way in STM. We rehearse a name or number, try to form an image, or devise a mnemonic to aid late recall. According to several multistore theories, retention in short-term memory allows the opportunity for information to be transferred, or copied, into LTM. Among others, rehearsal allows more opportunity to encode into long-term store. STM has transfer function, and words receive more rehearsals are generally recalled better. Verbal rehearsal may be necessary in acquiring some kinds of knowledge, such as learning new vocabulary words. New words need to be first remembered by sound, since a representation cannot be retrieved from LTM. It is suggested that residence in STM is neither necessary nor sufficient for LTM formation. It is also the case that maintenance of information in short-term memory does not guarantee entry into LTM and high level of exposure to material does not ensure retention in LTM. It should be remembered that processing in STM does aid Long-term learning. Activities such as forming mental images and actively interassociating or organizing to-be-recalled material are control processes employed with short-term memory and they do benefit long-term retention.
3. What is working memory and how does it work? (Jeon, Hye-ran)
According to the working memory model, the STM is consisted of two different substores, which are phonological and visuospatial. The reason that we can divide the STM into the two different subsotres is from the observation about what people actually do in their daily life. People seem to have no problem to complete two different tasks when the tasks are from the different substores of working memory. Since the two different tasks have their own substores in working memory, the interference between the two may be reduced.
One of the important features of working memory approach is that dual-task performances can be assessed by this approach. As it mentioned already, if two tasks use different STM stores, the interference between the two tasks can be decreased.
Furthermore the working memory works like an executive controller which is somewhat similar to convergence zone. It handles, directs, or helps the two substores to organize, plan, or perform information and actions. By doing this, it lets us know not only what to do but also what to avoid. Regarding to language learning, we can teach what learners need to know, and also what learners need to avoid such as translation in FL or SL situation, to be proficient language users,
The idea behind a working memory model is that there are basically two types of storage systems or modals and that these two are controlled by some central executive. The two modalities are phonological and visuospacial. This idea is simply a further abstraction based on what has already been observed in Short-term Memory (STM). The advantage of the working memory idea over that of traditional STM views is that it allows people to engage in two modalities at once. So people can listen and see at the same time and still process both types of information without one interfering with the other. The central executive works to make sure that precessing is optimally fast and that attention is focussed in the right place for the right amount of time. Thus precessing time and efficiency becomes an important factor in how the working memory functions.
4. How do we apply the STM in relation to language teaching?
Regarding to language learning, short-term memory plays such an important role in part of reception. When we read or listen to, it is necessary to remember what the previous sentences are to follow the meaning. Therefore it is critic for teachers to know what the short-term memory is, how to use it, and also how to improve or expand students' short-term memory.
One way of them is using chunking strategy, since the STM can be improved and expanded through chunking items into meaningful units. In case of reading, the ability to read thought groups which can be a group or words or phrase is very important strategy for efficient reading. By helping students to get to know how to form or find the thought groups, we can lead them to be more efficient readers.
Getting more attention is also a good way of improving the STM. Like all other things in the world, more paying attention makes better remembering. However focusing attention is expensive because it takes lots of energy. Students will not pay any attention if there is nothing to get from it. Therefore materials or lessons must be meaningful, and interesting to students. To do this, teachers sometimes need to act out or entertain. And also it is required to make the students be involved directly, and also interact with the lessons or materials.
Moreover, the long-term memory can help to build better STM. Using what students already know which is in LTM, such as schema or preassumption, helps to remember things better. Using familiar topics or environment in language teaching can nurture students` language learning.
Chunking
Attention-getting
Limitations on new content
Using what is in the LTM
Fauconnier (1997) Chapter 2 - Mental-Space Connections
5. What are some of the main mechanisms by which mental spaces are built and expanded upon?
Before this question can be tackled it is important to remember exactly what mental spaces are. Mental spaces are theoretical spaces in the mind that people create when they speak or think. As language or thought unfolds these spaces are built and expanded upon in idiosyncratic but highly constrained ways. In a real sense, mental spaces allow people to track the flow of their thought as well as keep track of ideas which were presented throughout the individual discourse session. In a real way every new idea which enters a thought our conversation were any additional aspect of the already existing idea will in fact open a new mental space. What is important is that all these mental spaces are connected in different ways: basically they are mapped onto each other. This is essentially how mental spaces work. By creating a mental space for every aspect of meaning in our thoughts and language and connecting them to form a chain of meaning which both the speaker and listener (at least in a discourse situation) have access to, we are able to fully understand what the other is saying and plan further discourse. Both interlocutors have access because, theoretically at least, both people are creating the same kind of mental spaces as they listen to each other and react to the ideas that the other is expanding and which are being created in their head. It is only the point of view which may differ.
According to the theory expounded by Fauconnier, grammatical roles and construction elements play an important role in building and thereafter expanding mental spaces. In short, it is grammatical devices which play a pivotal role in building spaces. Some of the ones Fauconnier mentioned in the chapter include:
-Space builders (......to the market)
-Names and descriptions (Bob, that damn pig)
-Tense and moods (was, would have been)
-Presuppositional constructions (these are invisible in speech and come based on the semantic encoding of certain lexical items and their surrounding context: Bob has three siblings presupposes that Boib also has/had parents etc.)
-Trans-spatial operators (copula be or stative verbs like become)
-Identification of elements (This deals with the properties of one lexical item being extended into a new mental space where that same lexical item is also found: If the lexical item John is in the BASE and the MEANING space then there has to be a link which carries the properties of John from one space to another.)
Looking at the above list in this important to mention that it is that the very difficult to make a distinction between what we normally think of as formal grammar and lexis or vocabulary. It would seem that a lot of grammar is actually handled by the vocabulary itself and not by certain hidden or universal grammatical frames. In this view of language grammatical frames are created through more or less lexical items. This is a very large change from what we encountered in standard linguistics. What is extremely interesting for us in this course is that it also fits in fairly neatly with the ideas of the brain and particularly memory systems and learning that we've been looking at. There is something very attractive about the idea of lexical items themselves forming or determining structure and not for structure sake but really with a meaning basis.
Another very simple way of looking at this is to think about the word association tests that we did in the very beginning of this class. When you do the word association tests what you really are doing is opening the mental spaces and forming a mapping chain from one mental space, which would be the basis to further mental spaces. So, if I give you the stimulus word water and you begin to form associations by saying things like fish, drink, swim, cool, etc. Depending on the nature of the relationship between the lexical items you may well be opening new mental spaces every time you mention a new word. This would of course depend on whether the relationship between the words is merely semantic or if it actually comes from memory. Looking at the above list most of the connections are not really based on semantic principles therefore we would expect a word association mapping like this to really involve a lot of different mental spaces.
6. What are some of the classic notions in cognitive constructionism and how have they changed?
Most of the classic notions revolve around how to prove or apply truth conditions to natural language. Traditionally troublesome areas studied in relation to truth conditions are:
Referential opacity - this relates to how the meaning or identification of a certain noun phrase is represented in the real world.
Scope of indefinites - this relates to how far and to what extent indefinite markers can be extended throughout a piece of discourse.
Presupposition projection - this relates to how far or to what extent presuppositions will control or dominate a piece of discourse.
Again, it is not important for you to the experts in these ideas. More important scene of a general understanding of what is going on and how this basic system works. Fauconnier, for his part, is trying to convince us that the mental models or cognitive constructionism model is better than the formal semantic model. He does this by tackling the above-mentioned areas which are traditionally extremely problematic for formal semantics and makes them work for us. For Fauconnier there are several reasons why the cognitive constructionism model works better. First of all, it does not assume that language is an accurate or true representation of the world. This frees language to do things which extend beyond the world and which cannot simply be measured by what is true in the world. The next thing is that Fauconnier's system is based on incorporating context into the utterances. In fact a more context the more mental spaces and the more complex interpretation and the more possibilities are allowable. Is important to remember that mental spaces do not have fixed meaning. Like lexemes in the mental lexicon, mental spaces really only have potential meaning. It is not until they actually enter into the realm of language that the meaning is made clear. The last thing follows up on what was just mentioned in this is basically about the way to mental spaces are built through connections. This means that the scope of things can be limited even within seemingly simple constructions. All these things inherent in Fauconnier system makes the system of cognitive constructionism much stronger and more reliable than formal semantics as it currently exists.
7. How do truth, reference and pragmatics relate to space constructions?
When linguists and formal semanticists are talking about truth what they are really doing is comparing what people say to conditions in the real world. They're making the mistake of assuming that language has to directly represent the real world around it. This is a way of trying to support the idea of universality in meaning constructions. As we all know, the goal of linguistics is to create universals which apply to all languages. This has also been tried, with highly mixed results in the realm of semantics and through what is called formal semantics. Now it, in order to try to make semantics universal they're has to be some said of universal code which everything is based on. This universal code is the world, but in order to to make this play out universally in language, language needs to directly represent the world. That means that referents, for example, which do not exist in the world can not really be talked about. To do so is to violate truth conditions, which again, directly from the real world. So, if I say something like; I just saw a unicorn flying through the woods, this will be assigned a negative truth value because it can't be true from what we understand in the real world. In cognitive constructionism there's a large distinction made between the real world and the world which is housed inside each of our brains. The world of our brains does not have to be totally accurate in codifying the actual physical world and often isn't. How people codify the world is based on their experience on their culture and many other ways. This doesn't mean that the way the world is codified as totally different in different cultures and different languages. Obviously dissimilarities tremendously outweigh the differences but there are important differences. These differences relate to language structure. So what is true in one language or more particularly in one situation (context) is not going to be true another. Formal semantics doesn't allow for this difference.