How the Brain Builds Memory and Knowledge; Through Patterning and Prediction.
How the Brain Builds Memory and Knowledge; Through Patterning and Prediction.
When your brain turns sensory input into memory, you learn.
The construction of new memories allows your brain to learn by experience and predict the outcome of your behavior.
Memory is a survival requirement for animals that must learn, store, and recall how they should respond to physical needs and changes in their environment.
They reactivate stored memories to recall and predict.
- Where did they go to find food?
- What places were dangerous because of predators?
- Where was the safe cave that provided shelter?
Each time you remember something, he is also reactivating a neural network that his brain previously created.
When you add new memories related to information already in brain storage, the neural circuit for that pattern or category of knowledge grows larger as more connections form between nerve cells.
In essence, the more information stored in the brain’s networks, the more successfully we respond to our environments.
The more we learn, the more information is stored in our neural networks, and the more likely our brains are to relate to new information hence, learning promotes learning.
LEARNING PROMOTES LEARNING
- Neurons that fire together, wire together.
- When more connections form between neurons, there is greater potential for further learning.
- Each time your child participates in any endeavor, a certain number of neurons are activated.
- When the action is repeated, such as rehearsing a song or reviewing a list, the same neurons respond again.
- The more times one repeats an action (practice) or recalls the information (review), the more dendrites sprout to connect new memories to old ones (plasticity), the stronger the connections between neurons become, and the more efficient the brain becomes at retrieving that memory or repeating that action.
Types of Memory
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Rote memory.
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This is unfortunately the type most commonly required of students in most school systems.
Rote memory involves simply memorizing, and soon forgetting, facts that are often of little personal interest, such as a list of vocabulary words.
Usually, these facts are not paired with interesting connections that would give them meaningful context or relationship to lives or past experiences.
There are no neural networks (patterns) to which these isolated bits of data can connect, so permanent memories are not constructed.
The good news is that by using personalizing, connecting, and motivating learning strategies, you will spend less time memorizing.
Instead, you will be able to link new information to her previous knowledge, existing categories of stored information, and personal experiences.
What remains to be memorized will be easier because you will discover which activities and strategies help build upon your learning strengths to efficiently construct permanent memories more rapidly and enjoyably.
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Working memory, or short-term memory,
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It holds data in the mind for less than a minute.
The challenge students face is in moving information from their working memories into their long-term memories.
If this does not take place in less than one minute, that information can be lost.
Think about the last time someone gave you driving directions that seemed so clear when you heard them, but evaporated once you made the second right turn.
To keep working memory from slipping away, it needs to enter the network of the brain’s neuronal circuits.
There are study activities, such as vocabulary word meanings or math formulas, you can use with your child to increase her mental manipulation of facts so the information is retained as long-term memory without tedious drills and repetition.
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Long-term memory
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It is created when short-term memory is strengthened through review and meaningful association with existing patterns and prior knowledge.
This strengthening results in a physical change in the structure of neuronal circuits.
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Relational memory
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Takes place when you link new information to something he already has stored in his memory.
Your brain actively seeks these connections when it encounters new information.
If no links are found and no strategies are employed to recognize connections that exist, your brain won’t transform the input into memory.
However, by using pattern recognition strategies, your child will make those links and construct permanent relational memories.
Studying for tests is more efficient and successful.
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PATTERNING
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Patterning refers to the meaningful organization, coding, and categorization of information in the brain.
It is through the patterns constructed and stored in neural networks that our brains recognize and make meaning out of the millions of bits of sensory input received every second.
The greater your experience in sorting information into categories, the greater your chances of finding relevant patterns in new information.
When you provide your child with a rich environment, interesting experiences, and sorting (categorizing) activities, you help her build her patterning tools.
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PREDICTION
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Prediction is what the brain does with the information it patterns.
Patterning allows the brain to store information and add new learning to existing categories.
Prediction occurs when the brain has enough information in a patterned memory category that it can find similar patterns in new information and predict what the patterns mean.
For example, if you see the number sequence 3,6,9,12…, you predict the next number will be 15 because you recognize the pattern of counting by threes.
Through careful observation, the brain learns more about our world and can make more accurate predictions about what will come next.
Prediction is often what is measured in intelligence tests.
This predicting ability is the basis for successful reading, calculating, test taking, goal setting, and appropriate social behavior.
Successful prediction is one of the best problem-solving strategies the brain has.
Activities that allow you to recognize, play with, and create patterns are powerful memory-building tools.
I once observed a preschool in which children were engaged in a variety of patterning activities.
In one section of the room, two four-year-olds were playing with cards.
They were not building a structure; they were simply sorting the pieces and finding patterns.
One child separated the pieces by colour, regardless of size or shape.
Her pile’s pieces were all red.
The other child said, “I know what you are doing.
You are keeping the same color together.”
Both children giggled as if a great discovery had been made.
Then the second child said he had a guessing game for the first child.
He sorted the cards by size.
To my surprise, he went beyond just collating the same-size cubes.
He also included cylinders and spheres if they were about the same size.
He was actually recognizing that patterning by size could go beyond shape and colour he was discovering volume.
I was already impressed and thought that was it, but not for these two kids.
The other child said, “I’m ready to make a guess.”
She then moved a card of about the same size as the other objects into the pile and asked if she was right.
Her partner said, “I think so, but try again to be really, truly, really, really sure.”
She then placed another piece in the pile, this one a small ball about the same size as the other objects, and said, “They are all the same smallness.”
She had not only detected the pattern and correctly predicted what would match it, but she had also verbally described it!
I don’t know who taught these children the skills of patterning and predicting, but their high-level thinking in these areas was quite advanced, and, more importantly, they enjoyed their activities.
I predict, based on past experience, that if they continued to have those kinds of positive learning experiences, they went on to be successful in math, reading, and much more.
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