|
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:
1. Verbal mnemonics
use words to aid recall
There are a number of different types:
|
Type |
What it is |
Example |
|
Acronym |
a word or
phrase is formed from the initial letters of whatever we’re
attempting to commit to memory. |
OILRIG
(oxidation is loss, reduction is gain) |
|
Acrostic |
A poem or
sentence where the first letter of each word or line helps us
recall sequence etc |
My Very Easy
Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
Or
Richard Of
York Gave Battle In Vain |
|
Rhymes |
Pretty obvious
really, but rhymes are easier to remember |
30 days have
September, April June and November etc… |
2. 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 …
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).
|
3. 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.
a. Context
dependent and state dependent learning/forgetting
Godden & Baddeley
(1975) gave deep sea divers lists of words to remember. Some learned
them on the beach the others under 15 feet (4.5 metres) of water.
Recall was best when the divers recalled the words in the same environment as
they’d learned them. Context (the
environment) is acting as the cue.
Abernathy (1940) found that psychology students performed better when tested by
their usual teacher in the same room as they had learned the material.
b. State dependent
Our state of mind
when learning can also act as a cue. The classic example is not
remembering what you did at the party the night before due to amount of
alcohol consumed, but being able to remember all the embarrassing
details the next time you’re in a similar state (of mind!). By the way
this is Goodwin et al (1969), not personal experience! For example they
found that participants who had hidden money or alcohol when drunk and
were unable to remember where the next day, were able to find it the
next time they were drunk. Other studies have found similar results
with the effects of marijuana and barbiturates. In these cases the cues
are internal reflecting psychological or physiological states.
c. Encoding
specificity principle:
This sounds complex
but is really about as simple as it gets! Tulving (1979), found that
the closer the cue to the target word the better our recall. Not
exactly rocket science! For example in trying to recall ‘Ramones’ a
clue like ‘Ram Jams’ or ‘Ramrods’ is more likely to trigger the correct
response than ‘Abba’!
Organisation and/or
elaboration?
As already suggested when we produce mnemonics to aid memory we are
organising the material which may explain why we remember it so much
better. However, creating mnemonics also requires that we elaborate
material or process it at a deeper level. So for example when we pair
tomatoes with bun or feta cheese with shoe we are creating visual images
of the words which, according to Craik and Lockhart’s Levels of
Processing theory (mentioned earlier) means we are processing at a
deeper level. Similarly with a mind map, we are looking for connections
or creating visual representations of the material being learned.
Organisation is also clearly vital since our LTM is a hooooooooge store
of information. Producing a structured and well organised store will
allow for more efficient location of information. Cognitive
psychologists do like computer analogies so liken it to organisation of
your files on your PC.
Most of the ideas above are simple and used on their own are going to be
of limited practical value. Herrmann (1991) believed we need to take a
multi-modal approach and use a variety of methods that suit us
personally. Similarly Matlin (1998) coined the phrase ‘meta-memory’ an
awareness of our own memories and the strategies that work for us.
A few ideas... Use
them!
Memory sorted!
|
