Question

Try to identify which individual factors have an effect on encoding accuracy. For example age, why ate you ger infividuals better at encoding than adults?

Answer 1

In psychology, encoding is the first three stages of memory followed by storage and retrieval. There are three types of encoding these are visual encoding, acoustic encoding, and semantic encoding if a child hears a sound and is able to represent it by symbol or letter that shows that child is able to encode the message, the process of encoding begins with perception that is identification, organization, and sensory interpretation within a context of particular situation.

In our brain different parts, help in encoding the messages, the thalamus synthesized into one experience, the hippocampus analyzes these experience, and decide whether to keep it in long term memory or not. The encoding is actually achieved by the reaction of chemicals and electric impulses within the brain; to store new information the brain rewires itself in order to store this new information.

The different types of encoding like Visual encoding the perception is drawn through encoding images and visual sensory information, and the Acoustic encoding is the use of auditory stimuli and the semantic encoding involves use of sensory input that is applied according to the context.

We have noticed that we do not encode all the information equally well, it depends what we want to remember, or it gets stored in our unconscious mind, it also depends upon our state of mind, and our want of remembering information, it is influenced by the attention that is called attention capture. Conscious effort to remember things requires focus, while consolidation of memory is a biological process that even happens while we are sleeping.

Working memory manipulates visual and verbal information, the working memory decides what type of information to be stored in long term memory depending upon the experiences, current thoughts, and importance so that it can be retrieved in future.

The researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste (SISSA) and author of the study have come to the conclusion that a 2-day old child is also aware of his surroundings and have the cognitive ability because newborn brains are full of feverish activity and that they are already gathering and processing important information. The children show rapid and significant improvements in their ability to remember individual items. During childhood, deeper encoding, use of strategies, and full attention promote better episodic memory performance. In children,memory improves with age because children are good at using strategies during encoding.

The researchers have shown that there is a difference in encoding between children and adults because the adults have the feeling that they know more than children thus they do not pay more attention while learning new information, it shows that knowledge also decreases memory accuracy.

The research conducted on children and adults showed that children show 31 percent accuracy rate compared to only 7 percent in adults because the children use similarity-based induction to remember and encode while adults use category-based induction when adults used category-based induction they filter out unwanted information. Thus children show a better rate of accuracy as they are learning new objects, and new information they pay more attention and use similarity-based induction, to encode the objects thus they can better recognize and encode it.