U3 AOS2 - LEARNING AND MEMORY

Area of Study 2

How do people learn and remember?

Learning and memory are interdependent processes that demonstrate the acquisition of skills and knowledge through experience across the life span. In this area of study students evaluate models to explain learning and apply their knowledge of learning to a range of everyday experiences and contemporary social issues.

Students explore memory as the process by which knowledge is encoded, stored and later retrieved, as illustrated by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s multi-store model of memory, including how information passes through distinct memory stores in order for it to be stored relatively permanently. Students explore the interconnectedness of brain regions in storing explicit and implicit memories and the role of semantic and episodic memory in cognition. They consider the use of mnemonics to increase the encoding, storage and retrieval of information and develop an understanding of the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives in understanding memory and learning.

Outcome 2

On completion of this unit the student should be able to apply different approaches to explain learning to familiar and novel contexts and discuss memory as a psychobiological process.

To achieve this outcome the student will draw on key knowledge outlined in Area of Study 2 and relevant key science skills on pages 12 and 13 of the study design

Key knowledge

Approaches to understand learning

·       behaviourist approaches to learning, as illustrated by classical conditioning as a three-phase process (before conditioning, during conditioning and after conditioning) that results in the involuntary association between a neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response, and operant conditioning as a three-phase process (antecedent, behaviour and consequence) involving reinforcement (positive and negative) and punishment (positive and negative)

·       social-cognitive approaches to learning, as illustrated by observational learning as a process involving attention, retention, reproduction, motivation and reinforcement

·       approaches to learning that situate the learner within a system, as illustrated by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing where learning is viewed as being embedded in relationships where the learner is part of a multimodal system of knowledge patterned on Country

The psychobiological process of memory

·       the explanatory power of the Atkinson-Shiffrin multi-store model of memory in the encoding, storage and retrieval of stored information in sensory, short-term and long-term memory stores

·       the roles of the hippocampus, amygdala, neocortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum in long-term implicit and explicit memories

·       the role of episodic and semantic memory in retrieving autobiographical events and in constructing possible imagined futures, including evidence from brain imaging and post-mortem studies of brain lesions in people with Alzheimer’s disease and aphantasia as an example of individual differences in the experience of mental imagery

·       the use of mnemonics (acronyms, acrostics and the method of loci) by written cultures to increase the encoding, storage and retrieval of information as compared with the use of mnemonics such as sung narrative used by oral cultures, including Aboriginal peoples’ use of songlines