A Reflection on Week 4: Memory

This chapter talked a lot about cognitive development as children enter school and move on to concrete-operational thinking from preoperational thinking. It seems accurate that we do need to move through certain stages of development before advancing to the next stage. Many of the skills needed throughout school are built upon foundations set in the earlier stages. Children need to learn letters before they can recognize groups of letters as words. One must learn to count and understand what the numbers are referencing before moving on to arithmetic. This concept just seems natural to me so I had never given it much thought. What stood out when reading was the reasoning process children go through when presented with a new word to read or a problem to solve. I had never really considered how children are constantly converting all of this new information they are taking in to their long-term memory. Each time they are presented with a new situation, they are attempting to retrieve helpful information from their memory, such as a smaller word within a larger word or simpler addition as part of a bigger problem. I remember learning the neurological steps in converting memories to long-term in A&P; it’s a wonder our children’s brains don’t just shut down and force them to pass out at the end of the day. That thing is working overtime; it deserves a little R & R.

A friend of mine recently learned, with her preschooler, that memorization does not mean the child has a full understanding of a concept. The ABC’s are a perfect example. We all learn the ABC song at a very young age. We, as parents, are very proud when our children can recite it to us. She assumed that because her child could sing the ABCs that he knew them. She was really disappointed to find out that when shown a letter on its own, he couldn’t tell you what it was. He has the base knowledge of what the ABCs are, however, so providing each letter it own identity has been a smooth process.

I have seen some of the memory strategies mentioned in the book in action with my own children. Rehearsal is really a great one. I didn’t even realize it when our oldest daughter had memorized my husband’s phone number just from me saying in verbally in the car to call him. She mumbled it quickly when I first asked her to repeat it to me because she was trying to imitate the sounds I had made. As soon as I explained that they were numbers, she understood perfectly. We used the same strategy to teach her my phone number. It literally only took about 5 minutes of repeating it together in sections first, then the whole thing in rapid-fire, then quizzing her a few times randomly. She helps me with a small shopping list the same way. “At the store we need this, this, and this. What do we need at the store?” If we do that a few times on the way, she will tell me exactly what we need when we get there.  

I hope that memory is touched on more in later sections of the book. Maybe it can explain to me why my darling, loving husband, who can rattle off any sports statistic ever generated or tell me who played for which team and when, can’t remember what he was supposed to get at the grocery store. I have a feeling in this case it has little to do with memory and more to do with attention ;) However, I am curious if there are gender differences in memory capabilities and what I am doomed to deal with as we age. I am also curious what the research really says about all those ‘memory exercising’ games you can play, like the Luminosity App you can download on your phone. Do those things actually help? They just make me anxious.