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Back to the Future



Ensuring something happens in the future is potentially rather easier to achieve if you possess a time machine. In theory such a contraption facilitates your travel back in time to amend things that are wrong with the present before they happen, or enables you to leap forwards to tweak moments in the future for the better. However, as Marty and Doc humorously demonstrate, this isn’t always as simple as it might seem!


For the rest of us non-time-machine-owning folk, our main hope for ensuring things happen in the future lies in the effectiveness of our ‘prospective memory’. As opposed to ‘retrospective memory’ (where we are trying to remember something from the past), the concept of prospective memory refers to our ability to remember something in the future.


Will you remember to wish Lucy a happy birthday tomorrow morning? Will you remember to send Jack to the office at 12.20pm for their appointment? Will you put out the garden waste bin instead of the food waste bin next week? The list of these things we tell ourselves we must do in the future can be long, and unfortunately they don’t always get done!


In his fascinating book, ‘The Seven Sins of Memory’, Daniel Schacter (1) details a number of examples of the typically uncomfortable and embarrassing ‘absent-minded errors of prospective memory’ that can occur when we do things such as forgetting to go a lunch appointment we’ve agreed to or forgetting to fulfil a promise to drop off a package*.


When applied to an educational context, the effectiveness of prospective memory is not just a matter of reliability or politeness, it can also have an important impact on a student’s ability to process information and to perform well in tasks set. There is, therefore, a good case for teachers spending a little time considering how they could attempt to harness thinking and research in this domain in order to improve outcomes. 


In one ear, out the other. 


I have long been intrigued by the fact that I can tell students to do something and yet some will always fail to follow my instruction. I have to confess, at times, to having been somewhat offended by this behaviour, even on occasion taking it as rude and wilful disregard for my advice!


Classic examples for me:


  • I explicitly instruct students on exactly how I want them to plan longer answer responses (using a ‘chain’ planning model I have devised), and yet they don’t. 
  • I explicitly point out to students very common errors that are always made in elasticity calculations, and yet within the week (sometimes even within the hour), they are making these errors. 
  • I explicitly instruct students on how to label theory of the firm diagrams by following a process, and yet labels are missed out. 
  • I explicitly advise students to read the question and highlight key elements to ensure they address them, and yet key aspects are not addressed in their writing. 
  • Don’t even get me started on the importance of noticing the difference in wording of an essay question between the ‘fiscal deficit’ and the ‘balance of payments deficit’. 


I am willing to accept I might be ‘a rubbish teacher’. I hope not though. 


I have thought VERY hard about why each of these errors might keep happening and I have tried VERY hard to prevent them. I have tried planning and delivering extremely clear instruction and I’ve spent many hours creating/resourcing very deliberate strategies and methods to help students perform. I have gone to great lengths to ensure students have definitely heard me (paying close attention to reducing every aspect of extraneous cognitive load; ensuring silence, eye contact and all indicators of full attention) and I have been ridiculously specific in flagging possible errors/omissions in some cases. 


The most extreme example of this relates to the diagram below. Having been repeatedly and considerably surprised to see students make errors on this diagram within hours and days of teaching it, I even began mentioning during my initial teaching of this that the labelling error that occurs on this diagram is SO common that I have told previous students of this one day, and within a week at least 3 people will make the error, so they should try very hard to ensure this mistake wasn’t made by them! This still didn’t work quite as I had hoped. Was I speaking the same language?! Did they just not even care?!



What was the reason? They had heard me fine (attention and quality of instruction were not the problem). But, in the same way as you know exactly what putting the right bin out is like and when you must do it, or as you know exactly what wishing Lucy happy birthday will involve and that you must do this tomorrow, I am increasingly convinced that students knew exactly what was required, but they just simply forgot. They knew what they were supposed to do, they knew when they were supposed to do these things, they had very politely and respectfully listened to my instruction. But when the moment came, 


they 

just 

forgot. 


Darn humans!


Schacter interestingly points out that we are much kinder to those who suffer from retrospective memory fails (such as forgetting when exactly something happened in the past, or forgetting a particular name or fact) as we seem to accept that memory of things from the past isn’t perfect. Suffer from a prospective memory fail though, and you will potentially come across as being unreliable, uncaring or incompetent! (‘I can’t believe you forgot my birthday!’, ‘Didn’t you listen when I said to take any tissues out of your pocket before you put your cardigan in the wash?’, ‘How on Earth have you forgotten to collect the shopping?’, *insert your own domestic fail situation here*!).


(I am therefore trying to take these episodes a little less personally now!)


Setting Alarms


I suspect that one reason we are a little harsher on those who suffer errors in prospective memory than those who suffer retrospective errors is that we can help ourselves to avoid the consequences of prospective errors by using external cues. For example, we can set alarms, leave notes for ourselves and set up various other sorts of reminders to help ensure we do things we should (even if our memory fails to remind us when these things are required). My theory is that the ‘more organised’ amongst us take less kindly to what they perceive as a lack of organisational effort in arranging cues, rather than being critical of the actually memory fail itself i.e if something is THAT important to you (partner’s/parent’s/child’s birthday or the like!), maybe you should have left a note to remind yourself, eh?! 


Paying a little time and attention to implementing some of these cues is likely to lead to a more harmonious home life and more reliable work life. And recommending use of these can also be offered as a tip for organisation to ‘forgetful’ students to help support them in remembering to bring required equipment and to complete homework.


But how can we try to improve the prospective memories of our students in order to support learning and performance in the classroom and the exam room? Cues can work initially and as scaffolding tools (e.g. planning an essay together before writing; reminding students at the time of a task to follow a certain process, to read the question, or to check for a particular error). However, when engaging with educational tasks, students cannot always be prompted with cues (we do ultimately need them to remember how to do things for themselves, by themselves). 


Practice


One strategy I have found effective in this area is practice. Building habits through practice often supports us in life (you hopefully always brush your teeth before you head off to bed!), and research indicates benefits of the ‘practice effect’ for prospective memory in educational contexts also (2). 


Whilst I would put good money on at least some students mixing up the price and QD in their elasticity calculations initially, and at least some students labelling S/R PC SNP diagram with output where MC=AC instead of MC=MR, by the time we have completed a number of rounds of retrieval practice and other practice tasks, the level of forgetting about these details reduces considerably. 


The same principles apply to typical exam performance ‘forgetting’ issues. Students will often be under increased stress (a factor implicated in worsening prospective memory) and typically forget to read the question/data, forget to follow advised planning/writing guidance or forget to check the time as they go along. The more practice they have with such conditions though, the less likely these things will be to occur. 


Practice helps to develop automaticity, and this can help reduce the reliance on prospective memory as students are operating on auto-pilot as they automatically draw out the ‘same old’ planning template for an essay question they have used 100 times before or as they always start an exam with a highlighter in their hand to hit key words on big questions before they write. (There is some debate in the field as the extent to which prospective memory actions can be automatic though!).


Future Thinking


Other ideas for improvement involving prospective memory are currently also being explored in research. One that particularly caught my eye was ‘future thinking’. In a study from Altgassen (3) on adolescents and young people, the use of future thinking and repeated encoding appeared to improve performance in prospective memory tasks. Cottini (4) also explores the impact of future thinking and performance predictors on task performance.


It would be interesting to try to apply these ideas in our classrooms (for example encouraging students to visualise their entry to the exam hall, opening of the paper and subsequent actions they should undertake in dealing with tasks set, prior to the exam date).


Schacter also alludes to the important role of memory in future thinking (a topic which he has worked on extensively in his Harvard memory lab over the past decade). He reports an interesting discovery that the (usually problematic) occurrence of mind-wandering (which typically reduces attention towards a task) could in fact potentially support individuals to perform better in creative problem-solving tasks in the future. The evidence picture is somewhat mixed, although the reason for this finding is that most mind-wandering is often directed to future events and thus this ‘autobiographical planning’, as Schacter calls it, can help an individual improve performance on future tasks. This may well lead teachers to consider whether allowing or even somehow encouraging some moments of thinking ahead/daydreaming about future tasks, exams or assignments might well be beneficial!    


Onwards, with a better understanding 


I have yet to encounter writing on prospective memory in any edu-books or blogs I have read (unless my retrospective memory fails me!), so I was keen to share my discovery here. I feel some knowledge of this concept will help inspire and refine my actions in continuing to support students to learn and to demonstrate optimum task performance when required. 


I think it will probably also influence me to be a little kinder in future when students instantly seem to forget what I have told them to do! 


Assuming I remember, that is…..








References & Recommended Reading


I would thoroughly recommend Daniel Schacter’s book to anyone with an interest in memory! 



(1) Schacter, D. (2021) ‘The Seven Sins of Memory. How the mind forgets and remembers’. 


(2) ‘The Practice Effect on Time-Based Prospective Memory: The Influences of Ongoing Task Difficulty and Delay’ - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02002/full


(3) Future thinking instructions improve prospective memory performance in adolescents’ - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09297049.2016.1158247


(4) ‘Improving prospective memory in school-aged children: Effects of future thinking and performance predictions’ - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096520305191#b0375



Further information on the word of the Schacter Memory Lab at Harvard can be found here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/schacterlab/home



* It is important to note that not all the examples Schacter provides are trivial in nature, and some very tragic consequences can be felt when prospective memory errors and other issues of absent-mindedness occur. The most heartbreaking of the those mentioned refers to the dreadful tale of the ‘forgotten children’ which details stories of parents who have forgotten their very young children are present with them in the car. These parents have them subsequently left their children in hot cars and children have tragically lost their lives as a result. I shall let you read the full, and devastating, story in Schacter’s book, but further information related to improving awareness of this issue can be found at kidsandcars.org and nsc.org.     
























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