You are on page 1of 2

284

CHAPTER 6 Memory

>> Closing Thoughts


Human memory is at once both perfectly ordinary and quite extraordinary. With next to no mental effort, you form and recall countless memories as you go through daily life. Psychologists have made enormous progress in explaining how those memories are encoded, stored, retrieved, and forgotten. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of human memory is its fallibility. Memory is surprisingly susceptible to errors and distortions. Under some conditions, completely false memories can be experienced, such as Elizabeth Loftuss memory of discovering her mothers body in the swimming pool. Such false memories can be so subjectively compelling that they feel like authentic memories, yet confidence in a memory is not proof of the memorys truth. Many mysteries of human memory remain, including exactly how memories are stored in and retrieved from the brain. Nevertheless, reliable ways of improving memory in everyday life have been discovered. In the Application we provide several suggestions to enhance your memory for new information.

A P P L I C AT I O N

Superpower Memory in Minutes per Day!


Yes, thats what many memory self-help programs promise you. But after you cut through all the hype, what are you left with? Mostly what were going to give you in this applicationsome well-established and effective but less-than-magical strategies to help boost your memory for important information. 1. Focus your attention. Problems in absorbing new information arise when distracting thoughts, background noise, and other interruptions sidetrack your attention. Television is one common culprit (Armstrong & Sopory, 1997). Rather than studying in front of the tube, locate a quiet study space thats free from distractions so you can focus your attention. If distracting thoughts are competing for your attention, start your study session by reading aloud part of what you need to study. 2. Commit the necessary time. The more time you spend learning material, the better you will understand it and the longer you will remember it. Budget enough time to read the assigned material carefully. If you read material faster than you can comprehend it, you not only wont understand the material, you also wont remember it. 3. Space your study sessions. Distributed practice means that you learn information over several sessions, which gives you time to mentally process and incorporate the information (Son, 2004). Students who take the distributed-practice approach to learning retain significantly more information than students who use cramming, or massed practice (Rohrer & Taylor, 2006). 4. Organize the information. We have a strong natural tendency to organize information in long-term memory into categories. You can capitalize on this tendency by actively organizing information you want to remember. One way to accomplish this is by outlining chapters or your lecture notes. Use the chapter headings and subheadings as categories, or, better yet, create your own categories. Under each category, list and describe the relevant terms, concepts, and ideas. This strategy can double the amount of information you can recall. 5. Elaborate on the material. Youve probably noticed that virtually every term or concept in this text is formally defined in just a sentence or two. But we also spend a paragraph or more explaining what the concept means. In order to remember the information you read, you have to do the same thingengage in elaborative rehearsal and actively process the information for meaning (see page 253). Actively question new information and think about its implications. Form memory associations by relating the material to what you already know. Try to come up with examples that relate to your own life. 6. Use visual imagery. Two memory codes are better than one (Paivio, 1986). Rather than merely encoding the information verbally, use mental imagery (Carretti & others, 2007; Sadoski, 2005). Much of the information in this text easily lends itself to visual imagery. Use the photographs and other illustrations to help form visual memories of the information. A simple way to make text information visually distinct is to highlight different concepts in different colors. 7. Use a mnemonic device. A mnemonic device is a method or strategy to aid memory. Some of the most effective mnemonic devices use visual imagery. For example, the method of loci is a mnemonic device in which you remember items by visualizing them at specific locations in a familiar setting, such as the different rooms in your house or at specific locations on your way to work or school. To recall the items, mentally revisit the locations and imagine the specific item at that location. Another mnemonic that involves creating visual associations is the peg-word method. First, you learn an easily remembered list containing the peg words, such as: 1 is bun, 2 is shoe, 3 is tree, 4 is door, 5 is hive, 6 is sticks, 7 is heaven, 8 is gate, 9 is vine, 10 is a hen, and you can keep going as needed. Then, you create a vivid mental image associating the first item you want to remember with the first peg word, the next item with the next peg

Chapter Review

285

word, and so on. To recall the list, use each successive peg word to help retrieve the mental image. 8. Explain it to a friend. After you read a section of material, stop and summarize what you have read in your own words. When you think you understand it, try explaining the information to a friend or family member. As youll quickly discover, its hard to explain material that you dont really understand! Memory research has shown that explaining new material in your own words forces you to integrate the new information into your existing knowledge base an excellent way to solidify new information in your memory (Kornell, 2008). 9. Reduce interference within a topic. If you occasionally confuse related terms and concepts, it may be because youre experiencing interference in your memories for similar information. To minimize memory interference for related information, first break the chapter into manageable sections, then learn the key information one section at a time. As you encounter new concepts, compare them with previously learned concepts, looking for differences and similarities. By building distinct memories for important information as you progress through a topic, youre more likely to distinguish between concepts so they dont get confused in your memory. 10. Counteract the serial position effect. The serial position effect is our tendency to remember information at the beginning and end of a sequence. To counteract it,

spend extra time with the information that falls in the middle. Once youve mastered a sequence of material, start at a different point each time you review the information. 11. Use contextual cues to jog memories. Ideally, study in the setting in which youre going to be tested. If thats not possible, when youre taking a test and a specific memory gets blocked, imagine that your books and notes are in front of you and that youre sitting where you normally study. Simply imagining the surroundings where you learned the material can help jog those memories. 12. Sleep on it to help consolidate those memories. Its been shown that sleep helps consolidate new memories. (Dont try this as an excuse in class.) Non-REM sleep (nondreaming) seems to help consolidate declarative memories, while dreaming REM sleep seems to help consolidate procedural memories (Marshall & Born, 2007; Wixted, 2004). All-night cram sessions just before an exam are one of the least effective ways to learn new material. 13. Forget the ginkgo biloba. Think you can supercharge the memory banks by taking the herb ginkgo biloba? If only it were that easy! Researcher Paul R. Solomon and his colleagues (2002) pitted ginkgo against a placebo in a randomized, double-blind study for six weeks involving over 200 participants who were mentally healthy. The bottom line? No effect. The ginkgo biloba did not improve performance on tests of learning, memory, attention, or concentration.

CHAPTER REVIEW

MEMORY

Key Points
Introduction: What Is Memory? The Stage Model of Memory

Memory refers to the mental processes that enable us to acquire, retain, and retrieve information. Key memory processes are encoding, storage, and retrieval.

The stage model of memory describes human memory as the process of transferring information from one memory stage to another. The three stages of memory are sensory memory, shortterm memory, and long-term memory.

NON SEQUITUR 2004 Wiley Miller. Dist. by UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

You might also like