Strategies for memory improvement
Another practical application of memory research is helping people to remember more effectively, for example in preparation for examinations. My use of photos of Morse and Miami Vice on the previous page would be one example of a visual strategy to trigger recall of Thames Valley and Miami police forces. A few other ideas follow:
Organisation is crucial
To some extent all the methods we’ll consider involve organisation of the material to be recalled:
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Acronym
Acrostic Rhymes |
a word or phrase is formed from the initial letters of whatever we’re attempting to commit to memory.
A poem or sentence where the first letter of each word or line helps us recall sequence etc Pretty obvious really, but rhymes are easier to remember |
OILRIG (oxidation is loss, reduction is gain)
My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets or Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain 30 days have September, April June and November etc… |
Visual imagery Mnemonics
Again this is based on the organisation of things to be recalled. For example if we want to recall things in order first, second, third etc. First we associate each number (one, two, three) with something that rhymes (verbal mnemonics)
One-bun Two-shoe Three-tree Four-door Five-hive Six-sticks …etc…
Now imagine you want various items from Siansburys and ideally you want to recall them in the order you’ll walk around the store to save time back-tracking. Items in order for me will be tomatoes, feta cheese, wine, bread, olives
I simply visualise (imagery) tomatoes in a bun (one), cheesy smelling shoe (two), wine in a tree (three), etc…
A favourite method used by stage memory people (there must be a technical term for them) is to visualise a route such as landmarks in the centre of London and then tag items to be recalled to these. On recall they visualise retrace their steps around the landmarks.
Visual imagery of this sort seems to work better with concrete nouns (food items, stationery etc) rather than with more abstract terms such as hope or conceit etc. Paivio (1965) believed this was because concrete items are encoded both verbally and visually whereas abstract words tend to be difficult for us to encode in a visual format (try to visualise ‘conceit’). Paivio referred to this as the dual coding hypothesis. (Bower 1972) gave participants 100 cards each with two unrelated words. One group simply memorised the words others were asked to produce a visual image linking the two words (e.g. door and cat). When cued (given the first word e.g. door) the visual imagers were far more likely to recall the second word (80%) than the non-imagers (45%).
Mind mapping is also an example of visual imagery enhancing memory (Buzan 1993).
Cues and context
As already mentioned we tend to recall things better when we’re either in a similar state of mind to when we learned them or when we are in the same or similar place.
Again this is based on the organisation of things to be recalled. For example if we want to recall things in order first, second, third etc. First we associate each number (one, two, three) with something that rhymes (verbal mnemonics)
One-bun Two-shoe Three-tree Four-door Five-hive Six-sticks …etc…
Now imagine you want various items from Siansburys and ideally you want to recall them in the order you’ll walk around the store to save time back-tracking. Items in order for me will be tomatoes, feta cheese, wine, bread, olives
I simply visualise (imagery) tomatoes in a bun (one), cheesy smelling shoe (two), wine in a tree (three), etc…
A favourite method used by stage memory people (there must be a technical term for them) is to visualise a route such as landmarks in the centre of London and then tag items to be recalled to these. On recall they visualise retrace their steps around the landmarks.
Visual imagery of this sort seems to work better with concrete nouns (food items, stationery etc) rather than with more abstract terms such as hope or conceit etc. Paivio (1965) believed this was because concrete items are encoded both verbally and visually whereas abstract words tend to be difficult for us to encode in a visual format (try to visualise ‘conceit’). Paivio referred to this as the dual coding hypothesis. (Bower 1972) gave participants 100 cards each with two unrelated words. One group simply memorised the words others were asked to produce a visual image linking the two words (e.g. door and cat). When cued (given the first word e.g. door) the visual imagers were far more likely to recall the second word (80%) than the non-imagers (45%).
Mind mapping is also an example of visual imagery enhancing memory (Buzan 1993).
Cues and context
As already mentioned we tend to recall things better when we’re either in a similar state of mind to when we learned them or when we are in the same or similar place.