Cognitive Process Required When Preparing for the Examination - Essay Example

Introduction This paper will illustrate the process involved in preparing for exams and show how psychologists explain how we perceive new things, focus our attention where needed and commit our learning to memory. Learning occurs when experiences cause a change in an individual’s thinking or behaviour. The change can be deliberate, conscious or unconscious. The learning process involves acquiring facts, knowledge and even skills that can be useful to the individual and the society. It will also help bring out the relationship between perception, memory and attention. The three qualities are inseparable and for one to be an achiever you must incorporate them all. Mnemonics are devices of memory that aid learners to recall pieces of information that are larger, in form of lists like steps, stages, characteristics, and phases. According to a study by Gerald Miller revealed that it did increase remembering and enhanced memory. Students who use devices of mnemonics increased scores of test up to 77%. They are limited by imagination of individual learners. According to Daniel Schacter, memory can be explicitly expressed as a recollection of consciousness, or implicitly as test performance facilitation without recollection of conscious. Dissociations between explicit and implicit memory have been documented. Memory is a revelation of a facilitation or change in performance of tasks attributed to the information. Alan Rogers (P.8) examined the process of learning in two ways: acquisition learning and formalized learning. Acquisition learning is an immediate form of learning that occurs unconsciously in a person’s day to day life such as the running of a home. One learns certain ways of running things in the home without necessarily setting out to learn them. It can be thought of as an accumulation of experience. Formalized learning, on the other hand, is a conscious form of learning whereby the individual is aware that the task they are undertaking is a learning process. Acquisition learning and formalized learning occur together: during certain activities one accidentally learns some concepts while others are learnt consciously as one sets out to engage in a learning task. This paper will focus on formalized learning. As indicated earlier, learning leads to a change in behaviour of an individual: tests such as exams and continuous assessments are an important part of the learning process as they help indicate whether learning has taken place through testing for a change in behaviour or knowledge. Attendance of every lecture is important when preparing for exams. By attending all the lectures, paying attention and committing to memory what is taught one becomes better prepared for the exams. The educative process is key in facilitating learning. There are a number of things capable of interfering with or facilitating the learning process depending on how they are handled. The surrounding in which learning takes place is very crucial as it can interfere with the processes of attention and perception which are key in the learning process. A quiet and hygienic environment is more conducive for learning as it enables the learner to pay attention to the teacher. The classroom arrangement should be so that the learner is able to focus attention on the teacher most easily. There are seven sins of memory which argue about theories of forgetting they include misattribution, suggestibility, which examines accepting information that is false, persistence, and bias. Textbooks and other instructional materials make the learning process easier, faster and enjoyable. The teacher is an important element of the learning process as well since they are the primary focus of the learner. The teacher should be ready to make learning meaningful by making well organized connections between elements of information, starting the teaching process from the known to the unknown so as to make the learner easily understand and follow the learning process. The use of visual images and illustrations is important so as to focus the attention of the learner on the material being taught. Bandura (P. 23) in the social cognitive theory emphasizes on the obligation of other people serving as models during the learning process. Self-efficacy is an important aspect of learning that is emphasized in the social learning theory. It is the prediction of whether engagement in learning behaviour such as studying or paying attention to the teacher will bring out positive outcomes. A student with a high self-efficacy belief is more likely to engage in learning behaviour more often and learn successfully. Edward Thorndike discovered 3 principles of learning that should be considered during the learning process in order to facilitate preparation for exams. The principle of preparedness states that learning is best when learners are physically, mentally and emotionally ready. It also determines the degree of concentration and eagerness. The principle of exercise that says that the things most often repeated are best remembered especially when followed with a positive feedback. The third principle is that of effect that says that learning is strengthened when associated with pleasant feelings and weakened when associated with unpleasant feelings. The characteristics of the teacher are very important and students will be ready to listen to and learn from a cheerful enthusiastic teacher as opposed to a strict gloomy one. According to Skinner (P. 43), the behavioural learning theory gives that learning takes place through conditioning where in this case the learner associates the teacher with positive feelings and thus also looks forward to learning. The emotional and physical state of the learner is important in determining their ability to learn. An individual that is healthy has no physical defects that impair their functioning preventing them from learning. Being physically and emotionally healthy is a prerequisite to engaging in productive learning. The memory is an integral part of the human being that facilitates learning. The human mind is able to take in information, perform operations to change its form and content, store it and retrieve it when needed. It is where learning occurs. According to the stage model theory the mind is divided into the sensory memory, the short-term memory and the long-term memory. The sensory memory takes in stimuli and transforms it into information that one understands through the process of perception. Although the size of the sensory memory is very huge, it is fragile in duration and information is easily forgotten. The short-term memory is the interphase where information that one focuses attention on is temporarily held. It is capable of holding five to nine chunks of information for a short period of time. Information here should be practiced and rehearsed for it to be committed to the long-term memory. The long-term memory is the permanent storage of information where information that has been learned is stored. Attention and memory go hand in hand with each other helping one to understand what is learnt; being attentive brings about remembrance. Learning and memory are related processes. Knowledge or facts that are not committed to memory through processes such as rehearsing, creating associations, the use of mnemonics are not moved to the long-term memory and are thus easily forgotten. When learning in class, a student can improve their preparation for exams by listening actively to what is being taught, taking note of the key words and highlighting them, identifying the main ideas and staying focused, associating what is being taught to what one already knows. Another way of committing information learnt to memory is by creating a summary of the information learnt in the student’s own words. Formulating personal examples on the concepts learnt in class helps the student to remember the information. Perception and Attention are major concepts that one has to employ in order to gain adequate information during a lecture. Perception is the ability to see, hear and become conscious of stimulus through the senses. It revolves around how we interpret things as we take them in through our senses. Perception is the channel through which we are able to learn. There are three general factors that affect perception; the nature of the perceiver, the nature of the object being perceived and the context of the situation in which perception occurs. The attitude and mood of the learner during the educative process easily alters the perception of what is being taught and may lead the learner to perceive information wrongly. For example, a student with a negative attitude towards the educator is more likely to focus on the bad feelings towards the educator rather than on the material being taught leading the student to perceive the material as difficult. Perception basically gives knowledge about what surrounds them. For a person to perceive they must gain information or else the senses will not explain what happens in the environment. This information is acquired from the environment. The student must employ their senses for perception to occur. Different sense organs perceive different information. After perceiving one seeks interpretation. Interpretation involves explaining what is perceived in a way that makes sense. Perception will influence whether one becomes an achiever or a failure. It is therefore important that, during lecturers, one adopts a positive perception. The student must consider themselves as achievers. This will make the impossible seem possible. It is also desirable to have the right altitude and perception towards lessons and lecturers. This boosts the student’s level of understanding and performance. Bandura (p. 63) suggests that attention implies the act of concentrating on one aspect while ignoring all other external factors. For one to be pay attention they need to be in a position of making the difference between relevant and important aspects. When attentive, one invokes their body mentally and psychologically this leads to the individual giving full concentration to the most important things at the moment. Attention can be achieved in the following ways; having enough rest prior to the lecture helping one to remain attentive even in lectures that may not be too exciting, taking quality notes during the lecture helping one to keep alert, maintaining a good sitting posture as a bad sitting position is likely to decrease one’s concentration, asking and answering questions also helps in improving attention. For one to study long hours without experiencing interruptions from external factors there is a need to focus on several things: setting priorities. This will help one recognize that in order to become successful they have to give resources and time to the things that matter the most. When setting principles to help one overcome external factors such as friends who tend to think that taking the time to study is a way of denying oneself the opportunity to enjoy social life. Self-motivation that is the desire to achieve one’s own interest, it makes one desire what is right at the moment without pressure from other people. When one is self- motivated you will give first priority to the important things. Discovering the most suitable hours and place of study that will include time that one is free from daily chores and this will help them concentrate fully on their studies. One should also choose a quiet place free from disruptions. It is therefore clear that perception, attention and memory are three inseparable qualities that dictate the success of any learner. Scharter’s theories of forgetting and memory reveal that there are dissociations that are explicit and implicit in nature. Works cited Schacter, Daniel L. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print. Skinner B.F Science and Human behaviour New York Appleton-century crofts (1957) .print Bandura Albert, Social learning and personality development New York Holt Rinehart and Winston (1963) .print Rogers Alan, What is the difference? A new critique of adult learning and teaching Cambridge (2011) .print Read More