Day 79
Passage 79
Memory Strategies
1
Memory strategies are ways in which individuals can organize the information that they are processing in order to enhance recall in the future. The use of memory strategies varies in both types and effectiveness across different age groups. As children grow older, they show increasing evidence of metamemory, the knowledge about their memory and how it works and this greater awareness and knowledge about one's memory will lead to considerable enhancement of the use of memory strategies as well as the levels of recall. [1]
2
Babies begin life with a primitive yet very useful set of memory skills: the lower parts of their brain can store information, but such storage is at an automatic level beneath consciousness and lasts for relatively short periods of time. Young infants at this early stage can recognize sights, sounds, and smells they have previously encountered, but such ability of recognition differs from the ability to recall in that the latter requires coming up with a response and determining that it is correct. Some simple recall begins to be present in the second half of the first year. As every babysitter knows, very young infants remain calm when their parents go out; by around seven months of age, however, separation protest is apparent.
3
Then, starting at eight or nine months of age, they show signs of a more flexible, deliberate type of information storage, the first inklings of memory as we more commonly think of it. Nine-month-old babies can imitate an action after a twenty-four-hour delay; but such early recall is heavily dependent on cues and is limited to relatively brief time intervals. Recall continues to develop over the second year, corresponding to the development of the prefrontal cortex and other brain structures associated with explicit memory. Between age two and two and a half, toddlers can be expected to remember to stay away from common hazards, provide their first and last names when asked, repeat parts of nursery rhymes, and possess simple event scripts for everyday events; they can memorize things but their memory seldom involves the use of memory strategies.
4
Preschool children then can use very simple tactics for remembering in some special task settings; for example, a four-year-old can be expected to use a marker to denote an object's hiding place in preparation for subsequently finding it. Pre-schoolers do not, however, use mental strategies and indeed do not typically differentiate memory and perception. In order to remember objects, they tend to verbally name or visually inspect items and use memory strategies intermittently or inconsistently even though they are aware of how they can improve recall. If they are reminded and taught to use memory strategies each time they are processing something that should be remembered, they can use strategies more consistently.
5
Memories then continue to grow longer and increasingly conscious until finally, during early elementary school years, children become aware of their own memory skills and begin to use them in a truly mature way—to intentionally study and acquire new information. A child's intentional memory shows dramatic improvement when he can effectively use memory strategies. By age seven, most children spontaneously use rehearsal to enhance short-term memory performance without planning beforehand. Retrieval strategies such as going sequentially through the alphabet begin to be spontaneously used around third grade. In late elementary school, children begin to engage in self-directed use of organization and demonstrate the ability to impose a semantic structure on the to-be-remembered items to guide memory performance. For example, if a child is packing their bag for school, they can go through each part of their day and think of each item that they need to pack.
6
However, elaboration, a highly effective strategy that involves actively creating presentation that integrates new information with existing information, may not be used spontaneously by children until early adolescence. By then, children begin to use elaborative rehearsal, meaning that items are not simply kept in mind but rather are processed more deeply. They also prefer to use memory strategies rather than simple rehearsals, and use these strategies without needing to think about them prior to learning.
——2011年01月21日北美考试机经
The word "spontaneously" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to____.
A. done naturally
B. done difficultly
C. done purposely
D. done by force or practice
核心词汇：
词汇练习：
阅读下列句子，用所给单词（或词组）的正确形式填空：
subsequently acquire dramatic enhance imitate
marker deliberate verbally tactic vary
intentionally response apparent correspond encounter
1. As a result, practically every aspect of the body form and function of these swimming "machines" is adapted to _____ their ability to swim. (OG: Swimming Machines)
2. The relative amount of these two kinds of water _____ greatly from one kind of rock or sediment to another, even though their porosities may be the same. (TPO-1: Groundwater)
3. Another, advanced in the twentieth century, suggests that humans have a gift for fantasy, through which they seek to reshape reality into more satisfying forms than those _____ in daily life. (TPO-1: The Origins of Theater)
4. In _____ to certain stimuli, many animals show instinctive aggressive reactions. (OG: Aggression)
5. Perceiving an _____ connection between certain actions performed by the group and the result it desires, the group repeats, refines and formalizes those actions into fixed ceremonies, or rituals. (TPO-1: The Origins of Theater)
6. Contrary to the arguments of some that much of the pacific was settled by Polynesians accidentally marooned after being lost and adrift, it seems reasonable that this feat was accomplished by _____ colonization expeditions that set out fully stocked with food and domesticated plants and animals. (TPO-5: The Origin of the Pacific Island People)
7. When researchers had one year olds _____ an action sequence one year after they first saw it, there was correlation between the children's verbal skills at the time they first saw the event and their success on the later memory task. (TPO-21: Autobiographical Memory)
8. As geologists mapped glacial deposits in the late nineteenth century, they became aware that there were several layers of drift, the lower ones _____ to earlier ice ages. (TPO-19: Discovering the Ice Ages)
9. General concern about misleading _____ that advertisers employ is centered on the use of exaggeration. (TPO-14: Children and Advertising)
10. But as more and more accumulations of strata were cataloged in more and more places, it became clear that the sequences of rocks sometimes differed from region to region and that no rock type was ever going to become a reliable time _____ throughout the world. (TPO-6: William Smith)
11. _____, other crops, such as bananas, were introduced from Southeast Asia. (TPO-7: Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples)
12. Older children and adults often try to retrieve the names of things they saw, but infants would not have encoded the information _____. (TPO-6: Infantile Amnesia)
13. For instance, apparently normal daily periods of biological activity were maintained for about a week by the fungus Neurospora when it was ____ isolated from all geophysical timing cues while orbiting in a space shuttle. (TPO-13: Biological Clocks)
14. Such groups are the breeding grounds in which we ____ the norms and values that equip us for social life. (TPO-13: Types of Social Groups)
15. A search of sedimentary deposits that span the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods shows that there is a ____ increase in the abundance of iridium briefly and precisely at this boundary. (TPO-15: Mass Extinctions)
参考答案：
1. enhance 2. varies 3. encountered 4. response 5. apparent
6. deliberate 7. imitate 8. corresponding 9. tactics 10. marker
11. Subsequently 12. verbally 13. intentionally 14. acquire 15. dramatic
注释
[1]与今日百句译（Sentence 79）相同的句型。