You are driving in your car and a song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard in at least 10 years, but you sing along, recalling every word. Now let’s turn our attention to acoustic encoding. High-imagery words are encoded both visually and semantically (Paivio, 1986), thus building a stronger memory. On the other hand, abstract words like level, truth, and value are low-imagery words. When you read the words car, dog, and book you created images of these things in your mind. Why? Because you can recall images (mental pictures) more easily than words alone. If you were asked later to recall the words from this list, which ones do you think you’d most likely remember? You would probably have an easier time recalling the words car, dog, and book, and a more difficult time recalling the words level, truth, and value.
To see how visual encoding works, read over this list of words: car, level, dog, truth, book, value. Visual encoding is the encoding of images, and acoustic encoding is the encoding of sounds, words in particular. When they were asked to remember the words, they tended to recall them in categories, showing that they paid attention to the meanings of the words as they learned them. The 60 words were actually divided into 4 categories of meaning, although the participants did not know this because the words were randomly presented. It was first demonstrated by William Bousfield (1935) in an experiment in which he asked people to memorize words. The encoding of words and their meaning is known as semantic encoding. Material is far better encoded when you make it meaningful. You can see that the sentences are now much more memorable because each of the sentences was placed in context. Next count backwards from 40 by fours, then check yourself to see how well you recalled the sentences this time. Now, try writing them again, using the following prompts: bagpipe, ship christening, and parachutist. How well did you do? By themselves, the statements that you wrote down were most likely confusing and difficult for you to recall. The haystack was important because the cloth ripped.The voyage wasn’t delayed because the bottle shattered.The notes were sour because the seams split.Read the following sentences (Bransford & McCarrell, 1974), then look away and count backwards from 30 by threes to zero, and then try to write down the sentences (no peeking back at this page!). What are the most effective ways to ensure that important memories are well encoded? Even a simple sentence is easier to recall when it is meaningful (Anderson, 1984).
Once you know how to drive, you can encode additional information about this skill automatically. When you first learn new skills such as driving a car, you have to put forth effort and attention to encode information about how to start a car, how to brake, how to handle a turn, and so on. But what about the actual test material you studied? It probably required a lot of work and attention on your part in order to encode that information. Recalling the last time you studied for a test is another example of automatic processing. Automatic processing is usually done without any conscious awareness. This is known as automatic processing, or the encoding of details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words.
If someone asks you what you ate for lunch today, more than likely you could recall this information quite easily. Encoding information occurs through both automatic processing and effortful processing. We organize the information with other similar information and connect new concepts to existing concepts. Once we receive sensory information from the environment, our brains label or code it. We get information into our brains through a process called encoding, which is the input of information into the memory system. Retrieval, or getting the information out of memory and back into awareness, is the third function. Storage is the retention of the encoded information. Encoding involves the input of information into the memory system.
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