Acquisition of Knowledge and the Development of Memory

This paper looks at various types of memory, how they are stored, and how knowledge acquisition is related to memory development. The Development of Memory and Its Relationship the Acquisition of New Knowledge Memory refers to the totality of what a person is able to remember, either from past experiences, things seen, heard, or felt. A more scientific definition involves the neurons in the brain, and defines memory as a set of neural connections that are encoded in the brain. Memory development, therefore, is the process in which related neurons are fired up in the brain during an experience, and the information is stored either in the short-term or long-term. The development of is more rampant in the first few years of a child because this is when the child experiences most things for the first time.

Effective information processing is important for a number of reasons. Foremost, it helps to make learning easy. Information that is stored in the short term memory is soon forgotten, while that information that is stored in the long term memory can be recalled after a long time. Transferring information to the long-term memory helps when one learns something related to the same information in future (Spiro, Anderson, & Montague, 2017).   This is why it is easier for a student to learn something in the same field of study than something on another field. An example of this is the multiplication table, which children are always made to repeat. Other examples are things like driving, typing on the keyboard, drawing on canvas, and trying a knot, among others.

The more a person repeats a task, the more it is likely to get memorized. However, this strategy is disadvantageous since it does not involve understanding. This explains why students who cram do well in memory tests but poorly in application tests (Baddeley, 2017). Of importance also is the fact that the effectiveness of a schema depends on the level of detail in that particular schema. Having this in mind helps to understand how attention is important in successful development of a schema. It is attentiveness that enables people to capture a lot of details. Hence, the more attentive a person is, the more the details that will be captured, and consequently, the more representative the schema will be (Graziano & Webb, 2015). Having accurately captured information, the perception of this person will determine how the information is stored.

Episodic Memories These are memories which represent specific events or experiences in the life of a person. Therefore, unlike semantic memories, they are dependent on personal experiences. Episodic memories involve information concerning times, places, associated emotions, and contextual knowledge, such as what was worn, and the event that was taking place (Indiveri, & Liu, 2015). Episodic memories therefore play an important role in reconstruction of the events in our lives. They affect how we process information by being able to relate to some experience. The development of false memory also affects how effectively we learn. This phenomenon leads to associating information with what is false, hence we end up learning things in a way we are not supposed to learn them. For example, a lady may remember crying a few months ago, but not remember why.