Application to Learning and Study Habits
Introduction
Memory is something that we never really fully understand. In this paper I am going to explain the many details and roles of Short-Term and Long-Term memory, as well as affects that attention has on memory and how it all ties into the process of forgetting. In addition, I will explain how to avoid common problems with forgetting.
Short-Term & Long Term Memory Short-term memory holds the information that we are thinking about or are aware of at any given moment. This kind of memory is what holds things such as dreams. Everything that we learn and retain is stored in Long term memory. An example of this would be the words to a popular song. There are many ways to improve your memory. Memory can be stored and retrieved in many ways. One method is called Rote Rehearsal. Rote Rehearsal is “the process of repeating over and over again what you need to remember” (Morris, 2008). This method is useful for things such as social security numbers and phone numbers. Another known method to retaining long term memory, called elaborative rehearsal, is “the process of relating what we need to remember to what we already know” (Morris, 2008), such as the remembering of the visible spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet – because of the acronym “ROY G. BIV.” Last but not least, another memory technique, called schema, is the process of “a mental representation of an event, an object, a situation, a person, a process, or a relationship that is stored in memory and that leads you to expect your experience to be organized in certain ways.” (Morris, 2008) For example, when you get into your car, you expect that nobody is going to veer off into your lane and deliberately hit you.
Attention
Attention is the process of “selectively looking, listening, smelling, tasting, and feeling.” This plays a large role on whether we remember something or not. For example, on a episode of Head Games, they did a experiment where they took random people in a park and sent a clown on a unicycle to ride around them and go back and forth, clearly within their vision. All of the test subjects who were talking on a phone experienced inattentional blindness, which is “the failure to attend something we are looking at.” All of them had no idea that there was a clone anywhere within the area. They were selectively focusing all of their senses on the phone call. This particular incident refrained them from remembering anything that was going on around them. There are many distractions that can affect studying greatly. Some examples of distractions that can occur during studying include: Facebook, TV, Nintendo 64 and other game systems, and so on. Some techniques that you can use to avoid these distractions are to temporarily ban certain items, such as using tools to block certain websites during a certain time, staying away from the TV and game systems. Some techniques to keeping attention during studying would include listing to music during studying to improve stimulus of the brain when thinking of the songs that were played and to drown out outside noises.
Forgetting
Forgetting is the act of losing one’s memories over time. There are many environmental factors that encourage forgetting, such as interference, and situational factors. There are two different types of interference that can occur; these include retroactive and proactive interference. Retroactive interference is when new material interferes with memories that already exist in long term memory. For example, when science makes new discoveries about things, it instantly overwrites the old data that was learned before. Proactive interference involves old data interfering with new data. For example, if you park in the same area every day for work and one day come in and find that all of the parking spots are full and you park on the opposite side, you are likely going to head for the old parking area when you leave. Situational factors are when certain environmental factors are absent during studying and therefore making it harder to recall what you have studied in the past. You can avoid many of these problems by repeating over and over what you need to remember and making sure that you pay attention to certain environmental factors around you that you can think about to improve your memory.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many things that I can apply to my study habits to improve my memory. These include, making myself aware of the environmental aspects around me during studying, repeating over and over what I would like to remember and retain, and eliminate the distractions around me while studying.

Sources
Morris, C. G. (2008). Understanding Psycology. Pearson Education.