What do students remember? Episodic memory and the development of schematization

Abstract

Research examining changes in memory and memory awareness during learning suggests that early in the process, students primarily have representations that are episodic in nature and experience remember awareness during recall. However, as learning continues and schematization occurs, students' knowledge is more likely to be dominated by semantic memory representations and just know awareness is experienced during recall. The greater the amount of remembering experienced early in learning, the more likely it is that the shift to knowing will occur in students. In this study, university students studied either material rich in distinctive features that may serve as cues to episodic memory, or material lacking in these features. Students' knowledge was tested after a 2-day and a 5-wk interval. In contrast to students who studied the material lacking distinctive features, students who studied the distinctively rich material showed a predominance of remember awareness on the first test, and on the follow-up test showed a predominance of know awareness and were able to recall more details of the learning material.