How to Remember - How to Learn
Research into memory, has enabled a much better understanding of how people learn. By applying what has now been understood, it is possible for you to improve your capacity to learn and remember all sorts of things.
There are three aspects to memory:
Encoding
Information received in the mind is transformed in order that it will reside in the memory in a different form from that given by the stimulus.
Storage
This depends on whether stimuli received are committed to short or long term memory. Memory based on short transitory media is very short - perhaps a few seconds to a few hours (e.g. trying to recall an unfamiliar telephone number you dialled earlier in the day). Other memories can live for years or even decades. This type of memory is converted and committed to deeper sanctities of the brain, mainly by repetition.
Retrieval
Short term memory retrieval is usually immediate whereas we often need to work at retrieving longer term memories. Neither of these two assumptions is correct. When one desires to recall an item from memory, the brain’s memory store is scanned.
The scanning proceeds by serial scanning, one item at a time ... but extremely fast.
Our capacity for memory is so vast that even fully utilising the brain for 70 years, its capacity would only be half utilised. No one has bad memory! The memory itself is perfect unless damaged by an accident. If you tell yourself you cannot remember, your mind tends to block recall; but if you allow memory to function effortlessly, without trying to block it, the response to recall will then be good.
Further Research On Memory
However, new research in Japan and America potentially may turn current theories of memory on its head. A team at Riken-MIT Center for Neural Circuit have done research and found that the brain actually makes two memories of events. One that is for the here and now and the other that will last the person’s life time.
In the past it has been thought that our memories start in the short term memory and then are converted into the long term memory. However, this research suggests that this might not be the case.
In the past, it was thought that the hippocampus is where we store short term memories whilst the cortex is where we store long term memories. However, this new research has found that this is not the case. The research was carried out on mice and is in the very early stages of development, but if this research is correct, it could change how we think about how our memories work.
Memory Exercises
There are several exercises that can help a person memorise. These are:
- Make sure you understand that which you recall. Material which has a meaning is more easily recalled than that which is meaningless, not fully understood or in which interest is lacking.
- Try to remember by using the positive aspect "I know"
- Seek the feature around which the whole is formed. This involves intelligent selection of what one wishes to recall.
- In those circumstances where essential parts go to form the whole; remember the whole and not the parts.
- If the item cannot be recalled, sleep on it and let the unconscious do its work. It is surprising how often this works.
- Frequent repetition of the items will give dominant priority. This is the method of revising and re-revising before examinations.
