How to Improve your Memory?

We live in an age where the information is rapidly expanding and the sheer volume may seem overwhelming. How can we ever remember it all? Thankfully we don't have to. We can use filing systems on paper, on computer and in our memory to store information. It's more important to know where and how to access information than to memorise material.

Attitude and attention

Consider the things you do remember, the things you know you'll never forget:

• your phone number
• your first car
• the words of Monty Python's movie scripts
• the birth of your child
• the scores and players in top cricket or rugby games
• a painting or drawing that moves you
• the words of a special song or poem

Why do you recall those significant things so clearly?

Probably because you were interested in them, they caught your attention, and gave pleasure. Attitude and attention to learning are critical for remembering over a long period.

Attitude

If you're studying a subject that holds little interest for you, it will be harder to remember the content. However, if you're determined to pass because you want to be employed in a certain profession and this is one of the requirements to get there, your motivation may provide a sufficiently positive attitude for you to process and retain the information.

Attention

You need to notice what's important and focus on it to retain it. We hear, see or experience something through our senses, but if it is not reviewed within minutes or hours, it will fade. Repetition and rehearsal, however, will keep the information 'alive' in the working memory.

Types of memory

Sensory memory briefly holds an idea of sensory information after the stimuli has been removed. Think about trying to remember a phone number someone has just told you. If you repeat it over and over 'til you reach a phone, you may remember it, but if you're interrupted on the way, you'll probably forget it. Similarly, if you hear law or history facts or anatomical or botanical names in a lecture but do nothing to deposit them in long term memory, they may be gone after the lecture is over.

One way of moving information to short term memory is chunking. For example, when reading, we chunk letters into meaningful units called words and words into phrases and so on. Ten digit mobile phone numbers are easier to recall if they are chunked into 4, 3 and 3 digits. Sensory memory only has the capacity to hold information for about 20 seconds unless some active strategies are employed to retain it (Roberts, 1999, p. 32).

There is a range of strategies which transfer information to long-term memory. For example, even though it is rarely important in adult life, many people can recall the rainbow or spectrum colours because, as a child, they memorised the link between the first initial of each colour and the nonsense name ROY G. BIV. A child will have rehearsed the linked pieces of information so often they became firmly embedded in long–term memory.

R- Red
O- Orange
Y- Yellow
G- Green
B- Blue
I- Indigo
V- Violet

At university you will need to remember in different ways. The most common way is remembering the material presented, and being able to express it in your own words, without using the author or lecturer's exact words. Often this type of memory work is used in the arts and social sciences.

Another way is verbatim memorising of exact words and facts, such as formulae, lines in a play, legislation or vocabulary that must be learnt in law, drama, science, engineering, mathematics and languages. You may have heard this referred to as rote learning.

Steps in the Memory Process

Step 1 Taking it in
Step 2 Retaining it
Step 3 Encoding it
Step 4 Recalling it

Step 1 - taking information in

You need to be attentive - to notice - and remember. It's therefore important to be an active learner. Passively reading texts late in the evening while comfortably ensconced on the bed with the heater on high and the window closed is unlikely to encourage full attention to the subject matter. Asking questions about the material and making notes, while sitting at a well lit workspace, is being active. You are more likely to remember what you read because your brain is actively engaged in understanding it. A dedicated work space and effective study habits aid memory.

The following tips will help set you up to successfully study and remember course material:

• Have a definite goal in mind for the session
• Aim to be relaxed as you study - without furrowed brow and furious intent
• Take breaks and change what you're doing. Get up, walk around your room, walk up and downstairs (without stopping to talk to others as this may interfere with your concentration)
• Link information to what you already know. For example, if you live on a farm and are studying agriculture, don't think of your notes as a series of unrelated facts. Apply what's in your notes to what you know about farming from personal experience. That is, whatever the area you're studying, try to apply the readings (the theory) to examples in that field (the practical situations).
• Deliberately arrange or adapt information so that it's structured and yet stands out as odd, distinct, different or more interesting-so that it grabs your attention. Consider creating mind maps to order the information (Cottrell 1999, p.207)
• Be aware of your learning style. Are you a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learner?

Step 2 - retaining information long enough to remember it

Research has shown that if you don't recall or review or work with what you've learned on a given day within 24 hours, you will forget 50-80% of it.

Mnemonics

Mnemonics are methods for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall. Mnemonics use as many of the best functions of the brain as possible to code information. The human brain evolved to code and interpret complex stimuli, including images, colour, structure, sounds, smells, taste, touch, spatial awareness, emotion and language. It uses them to make sophisticated interpretations of the environment. Typically, information at universities is presented as words on a page, but while language is one of the most important aspects of human evolution, it is only one of many skills and resources available to the human mind to enhance memory storage and recall.

The following are specific mnemonic strategies:

1. Association
2. Repetition
3. Recitation
4. Chunking and grouping
5. Linking
6. The journey system
7. Visualisation
8. Substitution

Step 3 - encoding information

The brain may use these means to encode information:

• oral
• auditory
• kinaesthetic (touch & feel)
• verbal
• visual
• semantic (relating to meaning)
• emotional
• motor (using a muscle sequence)

When discussing a topic or case study out loud, the brain uses and stores the fine muscle movements and sound of speech, the emotions and associated sights, sounds and smells, plus the look of any text. The beauty of the multi-faceted approach is that any one of these factors may trigger recall of information when you’re in an exam.

Cottrell (1991) offers some practical suggestions for encoding:

Use the environment

• Use a different room to study each subject. In the exam, put yourself mentally back in the study space
• Notice how you feel in that room. Are you cold, comfortable, cramped? Is it light and airy? Is the light on? Perhaps it has a low hum.
• Attach study notes to the furniture (or the back of the toilet door)
• Associate particular topics with items of furniture. For example, if you have to remember the different areas linked to right brain and left brain, visualise them on the two sides of a wardrobe, perhaps in different shelves, on top of, or tucked into, or falling out of, the things that are stored there.

Use your clothes

• Associate items of clothing with topics, eg, a shirt could link to a particular disease and each button on a shirt could represent a symptom.
• Wear the clothes into the exam as a memory trigger.

Use parts of your body

• Well, it’ll be in the exam room anyway, so link information to fingers, knuckles, nails, ears, toes, and arms.

Use motor memory

• If you prefer to be up and moving and it seems like torture to sit at a desk for longer than ten minutes, harness the energy. Move around the room as you recite lists of facts, explain concepts or arguments and counter arguments. Throw a soft ball against the wall and catch it as you say each fact.
• Walk the talk or talk the walk. Speaking and walking combine fine and gross motor muscles
• Use your hands to write and draw. Make mind maps.

Use auditory memory

• Make tapes and listen to them as you go for a run or walk.
• Make up new words to a well known tune incorporating key parts of a topic.
• Make up a rap or rhyme
• Imagine someone who is interested in you and explain the topic out loud to them.
• Use emphasis, vary the tone and volume of your voice, even use silly voices for different parts of your subject.
• Say it fast, say it slowly.
• Have fun. Laugh at yourself.

Use visual memory

• Make study notes interesting through use of colour (not just highlighting), drawings, diagrams, symbols and icons
• Use the same coloured pen or paper for each subject. It may be possible to use that pen in the exam, or for notes in the margin or on rough paper, when planning an essay or response to a short answer question.
• Make up a story using significant facts and watch it play in your mind’s eye. For example, if you are studying Early Childhood, trace the progress of a child’s development and the relevant milestones at each stage. Watch the child grow and play. Relate the facts to what you know: to your development as a child, to your niece or nephew’s childhood or to your own or a neighbour’s child.
• Make images big or small in unexpected ways. If it’s silly or odd it is likely to stand out
• Use mind maps

Use verbal memory

• Reduce information to keywords
• Write out information in the fewest words possible. This makes you interact with the material.

Use semantic memory

• Ask questions about the topic. Who or what is affected? How does it work? What will the outcome be? What are the arguments for or against?
• Express the same idea in different ways.
• Determine the three most important aspects of a topic
• Consider how one topic is similar to another?

Step 4 - recalling information

Good recall results from overlearning

• Use the active learning strategies outlined above
• Review frequently to make sure it's in long term memory.
• Use large sheets for an overview, eg, with linear notes in point form or a mind map
• Use index cards, preferably pocket size, so you can carry them around and easily refer to them in idle waiting moments (canteen or bus queue, watching clothes tumble in the front loader or dryer)
• Check what you've learnt. Find the gaps. Fill them. Review again.

The good news is the more you use your memory the better it will work, whatever your age!

References and Additional Web Resources

References

Cottrell, S. (1999). The study skills handbook. London: Macmillan.

Roberts, J. M. (1999). Effective study skills. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Learning and remembering. (n.d.). Retrieved March 19, 2008, from: University of Waterloo, Counselling Services Web site: http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infocs/study/learning.html

Additional web resources

Attention and listening
Learning strategies database, Muskingum College
http://www.muskingum.edu/~cal/database/general/attention.html

Memorisation
Student Academic Services: Academic Skills Centre, California Polytechnic State University
http://sas.calpoly.edu/asc/ssl/memorization.html

Memory improvement techniques
MindTools.com is one of the Internet's most-visited career skills resources
http://www.mindtools.com/memory.html

Memory techniques and mnemonics
http://www.psychwww.com/mtsite/memory.html

Remembering
Cook Counselling Centre, Virginia Tech
http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/remember.html