Take Home Points

In this chapter, i really enjoyed Willingham’s assertion that memory is a product of what we think about with an emphasis on emotional reactions and events. I appreciated the fact that he expanded on how memory works, and didn’t simply boil it down to repetition. While this is also a big factor in memory, he made it into a 3 pronged entity of attention, emotion, and repetition. I was fascinated by the fact that simply wanting to remember something plays almost no role in actually memorizing it. In the study he talked about where people were offered money for every remembered item, they did no better than people who did not have the incentive. I think this has huge classroom implications. It would be easy on a test that is heavy in memorizing facts and details to assume that if the students want to do well, they will study. In turn, if they are studying and wanting to do well, this will come together to result in a higher test score. While the desire to do well is not entirely irrelevant, it doesn’t have a huge resulting impact on a student’s memory. This fact is essential to remember. The implications in the classroom section was yet again very illuminating and gave very good tips to use and remember.

One of the big takeaways from this chapter was the importance of thinking/ processing in order to form a memory. Like Willingham explained, in order for an idea to stick, the learner needs to actively think about what they are doing. Me reading this chapter was a wonderful example of this concept. I had to reread most of this chapter, because I kept thinking about studying for my upcoming test rather than focusing on what I was reading. Another interesting point that was made was that purely wanting to remember something does not dictate whether something will be remembered or not. I tend to think that emotions and “want” would fall into similar categories, making a desire to remember something beneficial for memories. So it is confusing that this is not the case.