One Strategy to Improve Memory Is to Rehearse the Information (Repeating It Over and Over Again).

8.4 Ways to Enhance Retention

Learning Objectives

By the cease of this section, you will be able to:

• Recognize and use retentiveness-enhancing strategies
• Recognize and employ constructive study techniques

   Most of us suffer from retention failures of one kind or another, and near of us would like to amend our memories so that we don't forget where we put the car keys or, more importantly, the material we need to know for an exam. Of class it is impossible to call back everything that has happened to yous exactly equally information technology had originally played out. The previous section specifically emphasized examples of how retention can be distorted and in some cased completely fabricated. In this department, nosotros'll look at some ways to help you remember better, and at some strategies for more effective studying.

Retentivity-ENHANCING STRATEGIES

   What are some everyday means we can improve our memory, including recall? To help make sure information goes from short-term memory to long-term memory, y'all can use memory-enhancing strategies. One strategy isrehearsal, or the conscious repetition of information to be remembered (Craik & Watkins, 1973). Think near how you learned your multiplication tables as a child. Yous may recall that 6 x 6 = 36, 6 10 7 = 42, and half-dozen x viii = 48. Memorizing these facts is rehearsal.

Some other strategy is chunking: yous organize data into manageable bits or chunks (Bodie, Powers, & Fitch-Hauser, 2006). Chunking is useful when trying to remember information like dates and phone numbers. Instead of trying to retrieve 5205550467, you remember the number as 520-555-0467. So, if yous met an interesting person at a political party and you wanted to remember his phone number, you would naturally clamper it, and you could repeat the number over and over, which is the rehearsal strategy.

Try this fun activity that employs a memory-enhancing strategy.

   You could also heighten memory past using elaborative rehearsal: a technique in which you think near the meaning of the new data and its relation to knowledge already stored in your retentiveness (Tigner, 1999). For example, in this case, you could remember that 520 is an area lawmaking for Arizona and the person you met is from Arizona. This would help you lot better remember the 520 prefix. If the information is retained, it goes into long-term memory.

Mnemonic devices are retention aids that assist us organize information for encoding. They are especially useful when we desire to recollect larger bits of information such as steps, stages, phases, and parts of a system (Bellezza, 1981). Brian needs to larn the society of the planets in the solar system, but he'south having a difficult fourth dimension remembering the correct order. His friend Kelly suggests a mnemonic device that can help him think. Kelly tells Brian to simply call back the name Mr. VEM J. Sun, and he tin easily recall the right order of the planets:Mercury,Fiveenus,Earth,Mars,Jupiter,Southwardaturn,Uranus, andNeptune. You might apply a mnemonic device to help yous think someone's proper noun, a mathematical formula, or the order of mathematical operations.

This is a knuckle mnemonic to help you remember the number of days in each month. Months with 31 days are represented past the protruding knuckles and shorter months autumn in the spots between knuckles. (credit: modification of work past Cory Zanker)

If you have ever watched the television showModernistic Family, you might have seen Phil Dunphy explain how he remembers names:

The other day I met this guy named Carl. Now, I might forget that name, simply he was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. What's a band like the Grateful Dead? Phish. Where practice fish live? The ocean. What else lives in the body of water? Coral. Hello, Co-arl. (Wrubel & Spiller, 2010)

It seems the more brilliant or unusual the mnemonic, the easier it is to call back. The key to using any mnemonic successfully is to find a strategy that works for you lot.

Watch this fascinating TED Talk titled "Feats of Retentivity Anyone Tin Do." The lecture is given by Joshua Foer, a science writer who "accidentally" won the U. S. Memory Championships. He explains a mnemonic device called the memory palace.

   Some other strategies that are used to better memory include expressive writing and saying words aloud. Expressive writing helps boost your short-term retentiveness, particularly if yous write nigh a traumatic experience in your life. Masao Yogo and Shuji Fujihara (2008) had participants write for 20-minute intervals several times per calendar month. The participants were instructed to write about a traumatic experience, their all-time possible future selves, or a trivial topic. The researchers establish that this unproblematic writing task increased short-term memory capacity after five weeks, but only for the participants who wrote almost traumatic experiences. Psychologists can't explain why this writing job works, simply it does.

What if y'all want to remember items you need to option upwards at the store? But say them out loud to yourself. A series of studies (MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, & Ozubko, 2010) found that proverb a discussion out loud improves your memory for the give-and-take because it increases the word's distinctiveness. Feel silly, saying random grocery items aloud? This technique works every bit well if you only mouth the words. Using these techniques increased participants' memory for the words by more than 10%. These techniques can too exist used to help you lot study.

In some of the previous sections, depth of processing has been discussed to propose that information that is encoded in a deeper way by associating the information to exist remembered with something that is of import to you on a personal level or personally identifying with the information can create a stronger trace for the information to be afterward recalled (Craik & Tulving, 1975). Further studies implementing these theories in terms of enhancing memory have demonstrated that by encoding the information with an emotional valence, the information may be efficiently recalled and the memory trace may be more vivid assuasive for more details to exist accurately remembered (Kensigner & Corkin, 2003). Comparing memory for neutrally valence words compared to words encoded with a negative valence indicated that participants were statistically more than likely to accurately remember words with a valence or emotional arousal associated. Additionally, words that were encoded with both emotional arousal (words related to cultural taboos) and negative valence were more authentic and had higher recall rates compared to words with just emotional valence. This suggests that systems in the brain that create emotional responses such as the amygdala and hypothalamus can be recruited past attaching emotional reactions to information to be remembered in order to enhance encoding procedures and build a stronger trace for later retrieve.

HOW TO STUDY Finer

   Based on the information presented in this affiliate, here are some strategies and suggestions to aid you strop your study techniques. The cardinal with any of these strategies is to figure out what works best for you.

Memory techniques can exist useful when studying for class. (credit: Barry Pousman)

• Use elaborative rehearsal: In a famous article, Craik and Lockhart (1972) discussed their belief that information nosotros process more securely goes into long-term memory. Their theory is called levels of processing. If we want to call back a piece of information, nosotros should call up about it more deeply and link it to other information and memories to make it more than meaningful. For instance, if nosotros are trying to call back that the hippocampus is involved with memory processing, we might envision a hippopotamus with fantabulous retentiveness and then we could better remember the hippocampus.
• Utilise the cocky-reference outcome: Every bit you go through the procedure of elaborative rehearsal, it would be even more beneficial to make the material you are trying to memorize personally meaningful to you. In other words, make utilize of the self-reference effect. Write notes in your own words. Write definitions from the text, and and then rewrite them in your own words. Relate the material to something y'all have already learned for another grade, or remember how you can apply the concepts to your own life. When y'all do this, you are edifice a spider web of retrieval cues that will help you lot access the cloth when y'all want to call back it.
• Don't forget the forgetting curve: Equally y'all know, the information y'all acquire drops off chop-chop with time. Even if you think y'all know the material, study it once more correct before examination time to increase the likelihood the information will remain in your memory. Overlearning tin can assist prevent storage disuse.
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse: Review the cloth over time, in spaced and organized study sessions. Organize and study your notes, and take do quizzes/exams. Link the new data to other information you already know well.
• Be aware of interference: To reduce the likelihood of interference, written report during a quiet time without interruptions or distractions (like tv or music).
• Go on moving: Of course you already know that exercise is skilful for your trunk, just did you likewise know it's also good for your mind? Research suggests that regular aerobic do (anything that gets your heart rate elevated) is benign for memory (van Praag, 2008). Aerobic exercise promotes neurogenesis: the growth of new encephalon cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain known to play a role in retention and learning.
• Get enough sleep: While you are sleeping, your encephalon is still at work. During slumber the brain organizes and consolidates information to exist stored in long-term memory (Abel & Bäuml, 2013).
• Make use of mnemonic devices: As you learned before in this chapter, mnemonic devices often help u.s. to recollect and call back information. There are unlike types of mnemonic devices, such as the acronym. An acronym is a word formed by the first alphabetic character of each of the words you want to remember. For example, even if yous live near one, you might have difficulty recalling the names of all five Cracking Lakes. What if I told you to think of the discussion Homes? HOMES is an acronym that represents Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior: the five Great Lakes. Another type of mnemonic device is an acrostic: you make a phrase of all the starting time letters of the words. For example, if you are taking a math exam and you lot are having difficulty rememberingthe gild of operations, recalling the following judgement will help you: "Please Excuse My Honey Aunt Sally," because the gild of mathematical operations is Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Partition, Add-on, Subtraction. In that location also are jingles, which are rhyming tunes that contain central words related to the concept, such asi before e, except afterwards c.

THE METHOD OF LOCI – CREATING INSTRUCTIONS TO ASSIST Retentivity RETRIEVAL

The World Retentiveness Competitions represent a series of events where people from all over the earth compete in ten different disciplines of retentivity in order to memorize as much information as possible within a given menstruation of time and and then are judged on what they are able to call up and the accurateness of their memory. 1 of the central strategies individuals have reported using in gild to master their encoding ability and compete with some of the worlds leading memory performers is known as the method of loci, a strategy of retention enhancement which uses visualizations, spatial memory, and familiarity with the environs to quickly and efficiently recall information. Also known equally the memory journey, retention palace, or the memory palace technique, this mnemonic device dates back to aboriginal Greece and Rome where orators and story tellers would use this method to memorize grandiose speeches and pass down ballsy stories through oral history such as the Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey. The method of loci is an imaging technique where a person memorizes the layout of a edifice or some environs they are familiar with, and information that is needed to be remembered is arranged throughout the surround. The person trying to recall the data and then uses this spatial map they have created to mentally walk through the environment to encounter each piece of information forth the manner. This mnemonic has been widely used throughout the history of humans and mod brain imaging techniques have demonstrated activation of areas of the brain related to spatial memory during method of loci recall including the medial prefrontal cortex and areas of the posterior hippocampus (Maguire et al., 2003). Additionally recent research using virtual reality has demonstrated that the method of loci appears to be as useful in environments that are novel compared to familiar, likewise as extremely detailed compared to less detailed (Legge et al., 2012). Additionally the method of loci was demonstrated to be constructive for participants that had previously been naive to the technique compared to participants that did non utilize the method of loci. Overall, the method of loci represents a historically skillful and scientifically validated technique which tin can create a stronger process of encoding and lead to more than accurate and efficient information recall.

SUMMARY

   In that location are many ways to gainsay the inevitable failures of our memory system. Some mutual strategies that can be used in everyday situations include mnemonic devices, rehearsal, self-referencing, and adequate sleep. These same strategies also tin assistance you to study more effectively.

References:

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter licensed under CC Past v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Exercises

Review Questions:

1. When you lot are learning how to play the piano, the statement "Every skilful boy does fine" can help y'all remember the notes E, G, B, D, and F for the lines of the treble clef. This is an example of a (an) ________.

a. jingle

b. acronym

c. acrostic

d. acoustic

2. According to a report by Yogo and Fujihara (2008), if you want to improve your short-term memory, you should spend time writing about ________.

your all-time possible future cocky

a. a traumatic life experience

b. a trivial topic

c. your grocery list

three. The self-referencing result refers to ________.

a. making the material you lot are trying to memorize personally meaningful to yous

b. making a phrase of all the first letters of the words you are trying to memorize

c. making a discussion formed by the first alphabetic character of each of the words you are trying to memorize

d. maxim words yous want to remember out loud to yourself

4. What type of memory enhancer requires y'all to organize units into manageable units?

a. rehearsal

b. chunking

c. elaborative rehearsal

d. none of the in a higher place

5. Memory aids that assistance organize information for encoding are ________.

a. mnemonic devices

b. retention-enhancing strategies

c. elaborative rehearsal

d. effortful processing

Critical Thinking Questions:

ane. What is the self-reference effect, and how can it help you report more effectively?

two. You lot and your roommate spent all of concluding night studying for your psychology test. You think yous know the fabric; however, you propose that you lot study again the next morning time an hour prior to the test. Your roommate asks you to explain why you recollect this is a practiced idea. What do you tell her?

3. Draw iii different ways yous could enhance your retentiveness when studying for an examination. Which strategies do you think are more constructive in enhancing memory than others?

Personal Awarding Questions:

i. Create a mnemonic device to help you remember a term or concept from this chapter.

2. What is an effective study technique that you take used? How is it similar to/dissimilar from the strategies suggested in this chapter?

Glossary:

chunking

elaborative rehearsal

levels of processing

retention-enhancing strategy

mnemonic device

Answers to Exercises

Review Questions:

i. C

ii. B

3. A

iv. B

five. A

Critical Thinking Questions:

i. The cocky-reference effect is the trend an individual to have better memory for information that relates to oneself than information that is non personally relevant. You can utilise the self-reference consequence to relate the textile to something you have already learned for another form, or think how y'all can apply the concepts to your life. When y'all practice this, you are building a spider web of retrieval cues that will aid y'all admission the material when you desire to remember it.

two. You remind her about Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve: the data you learn drops off quickly with fourth dimension. Even if yous think y'all know the material, y'all should study it again correct before test time to increment the likelihood the information volition remain in your retentiveness. Overlearning can help prevent storage decay.

Glossary:

chunking: organizing information into manageable bits or chunks

elaborative rehearsal: thinking about the pregnant of the new information and its relation to knowledge already stored in your memory

levels of processing: information that is idea of more than deeply becomes more than meaningful and thus meliorate committed to memory

memory-enhancing strategy: technique to help make sure information goes from short-term retentiveness to long-term retentiveness

mnemonic device: memory aids that assistance organize information for encoding

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Source: https://opentext.wsu.edu/psych105/chapter/8-5-ways-to-enhance-memory/

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