Rules for Remembering Names and Places
– modified keyword method
– 1. form a substitute word, phrase, or thought that will remind you of the name (use a visual with a story)
– 2. find one outstanding feature on the face
– 3. associate the two things (visual story)
– name / face / thought in mental triangle
– called the “Zip” method
Construction and Reconstruction
– a process of distortion to make an easy pattern
– part of learning and forgetting
– “We fill in the lowlands of our memory from the highlands of our imgination”
– example: a story is told about an engaged couple who quarrel. A week later, if the group is told the engagement is off, they remember the fight as worse. Else, they remember the fight as minor.
– implications for early Christianity?
– when you assume a fact in a question, you can make someone “remember” (reconstruct) the assumed fact
– Cathecism / Christian FAQ implications?
– reconstructed narratives == “framing” ?
“Failure to Construct” / “Failure to Encode” as “forgetting” — “I forgot your name” — did you ever remember it?
– without correct context, narratives are very hard to remember
– reason titles are important: it actives prior knowledge
Metacognition
– “good students test themselves, so there’s nothing the teacher can ask them that they haven’t asked themselves”
– Clausewitzian? slow OODA? scientific or “zero-defect” strategy?
– importance of being flexible, able, to deform an environment (by applying friction) into more easily conquorable battlespace
– (how did early Christianity deform Roman “regime ” to make victory easier?)
– for example, deforming a story problem into an algebra problem
– “application skill,” Boydian, empowerment, Sun-Tzu
– “metacognition it not just an academic skill, it is a life skill”
– self-awareness and self-questioning
– works with situational memories
– “visualization as form of metacognition”
— people who visualize freethrows imporve almost as much as those who actually practice
— so could universities be an example of harmful visualization / learning, where “thought experiments” that provide non-real outcomes impede understanding?
— competence and domination, pecking order visualization, Howard Bloom’s “Lucifer Principle”
— “breaking confidence” as cognitive/metacognitive/visualized battlespace?
You need skill (metacognition) and will (desire) to learn — true????
Memory and learning strategies decrease in importance as general knowledge increases
Representations
– importance of non-sequential learning (not “reading” or “listening”)
– semiotics implications
Introduction to Knowledge Representations
Compare Outline v. Matrix
Localization Seperated v. Together
Clutter Repititious v. Efficient
Missing Info Obscured v. Apparent
“Big Picture” Obscrued v. Apparent
Matrices are better/faster than outlines
– (because of human visual processing / pattern recognition?)
only good reason to use representations is to know patterns and relationships, otherwise useless
Representation Systems
hierarchies
– superordinate/subordinate
– rule of thumb: if you have 7 or more of anything, you have nothing (sheik system?)
– every hierarchy can become a matrix
– think above, below, lateral
sequences – temporal
matrices – coordinate/comparative
diagram/illustration – static/dynamic
