Page 69 - Biblical Counseling II-Textbook

Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time and
frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.

Memory: Memory accounts for time and defines our life. It is our memory that enables us to recognize
family, speak our language, find our way home, and locate food and water. It is our memory that
enables us to enjoy an experience and then mentally replay and enjoy it again. Our shared memories
help bind us together. And it is our memories that can occasionally pit us against those whose offenses
we cannot forget (Myer, p. 182, 2012).
To remember any event we must:
1. Get information into our brain (encoding)
2. Retain that information (storage)
3. Later get it back out (retrieval)

(photo: www.obsidianlearning.com)

As a memory experiment, memorize this list of five words: avoid, cigarette, fire, imagine, process
Once you have the five words memorized, try not to look at the words again. I will ask you to say the
words in a little while. Let’s spend some time looking at encoding, storing and retrieving in more detail.
Encoding: Getting Information In
“How We Encode: We process some external stimuli consciously in our sensory memory, while other
external events are processed beneath our conscious efforts. The events we notice and attend to are
encoded or processed in our working memory (short-term memory). Further processing and rehearsing
encodes important parts of the event into our long-term memory, from which the information may later
be retrieved. Here we will focus on the encoding part of that process. You encode information, such as
the route you walked to your last class, with great ease, freeing your memory system to focus on less
familiar events. But to retain more complex information, such as a friend’s cell phone number, you need
to pay attention and try hard” (Myers, p. 182, 2012).
Automatic Processing
“Thanks to your brain’s capacity for simultaneous activity (for parallel processing), an enormous amount
of multitasking (doing more than one thing at the same time) goes on without your conscious attention.
For example, without conscious effort, you automatically process information about

1. Space. While studying, you often encode the place on a page where certain material appears; later,
when struggling to recall that information, you may visualize its location.

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