{"id":36492,"date":"2015-04-29T15:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=36492"},"modified":"2015-08-07T13:11:12","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T20:11:12","slug":"how-our-brains-encode-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/how-our-brains-encode-information\/","title":{"rendered":"How our brains encode information"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Michelle Miller
\n<\/em><\/span>Director of the\u00a0First Year Learning Initiative with University College\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Of all the things our minds and brains do, memory may be the most important thing.<\/p>\n

There are many factors that determine what we\u2019ll remember and what we will forget in any given situation, but a major driver is attention.<\/p>\n

The more researchers seek to understand how memory works, the more they realize that it\u2019s hard to even separate memory systems from attentional systems.<\/p>\n

This is especially true for learning new information, a process called encoding.\u00a0Many theorists believe that encoding something new is unlikely without some degree of focused attention.\u00a0And this capacity for focused attention is fairly narrow, so that you can really apply it only sequentially and to a very limited number of items.<\/p>\n

Strictly speaking, the brain can multitask, but most of the things we process simultaneously are those that don\u2019t require focused attention.\u00a0So memory is greatly improved when we focus, and yet, many of us kid ourselves about just what we can manage with our limited attention, and we tend to see ourselves as exceptional when it comes to these limitations.<\/p>\n

In my current work<\/a>, I\u2019m attempting to define some of these key misconceptions we have \u2013 such as, that we can learn passively \u201cby osmosis,\u201d or that some people are just exceptional at being able to juggle lots of inputs at once.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also looking at whether these beliefs connect in any way to behaviors such as talking on the phone while driving or texting while you\u2019re in a class, but as I mentioned, we can only do so many things at once!\u00a0The purpose is to better understand what people think about their own attention and memory capacities, and to design interventions that can help change some of these beliefs.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: The above blog first\u00a0appeared on\u00a0<\/em>Academic Minute<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on April 23.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Michelle Miller Director of the\u00a0First Year Learning Initiative with University College\u00a0 Of all the things our minds and brains do, memory may be the most important thing. There are many factors that determine what we\u2019ll remember and what we will forget in any given situation, but a major driver is attention. The more researchers seek…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-from-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}