Selection 4: Improving Your Memory
(psychology)

College students, in particular, have a great deal of information to memorize. Of course you must first read and comprehend the material, but once you have done that, how can you go about memorizing the information as efficiently as possible? This psychology textbook selection presents some effective ways.

1. Apart from the advantages of forgetting, say, a bad date, most of us still would like to find ways to improve our memories. Is it possible to find practical ways to increase our recall of information? Most definitely. Research has revealed a number of strategies that can be used to help us develop better memories. Among the best:
2. The keyword technique. Suppose you are taking a foreign language class and need to learn vocabulary words. You can try using the keyword technique, in which a foreign word is paired with a common English word that has a similar sound. This English word is known as the keyword. For example, to remember the Spanish word for duck (pato, pronounced pot-o), you might choose the keyword pot; for the Spanish word for horse (caballo, pronounced cob-eye-yo), the keyword might be eye.
3. Once you have thought of a keyword, imagine the Spanish word "interacting" with the English keyword. For instance, you might envision a duck taking a bath in a pot to remember the word pato, or a horse with a large, bulging eye in the center of its head to recall caballo. This technique has produced considerably superior results in learning foreign language vocabulary than more traditional techniques involving memorization of the words themselves.
4. Encoding specificity. Encoding refers to the process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory. Some research suggests that we remember information best in an environment that is the same as or similar to where we initially learned it. This phenomenon is known as encoding specificity. You might do better on a test, then, if you study in the classroom where the test will be given. On the other hand, if you must take a test in a different room from the one in which you studied, don't despair: The features of the test itself, such as the wording of the test questions, are sometimes so powerful that they overwhelm the subtler cues relating to the original encoding of the material.
5. Organization cues. Many of life's important recall tasks involve texts that you have read. One proven technique for improving recall of written material is to organize the material in memory as you read it for the first time—one of the rationales for using a "prepare-organize-work-evaluate-rethink" system to approaching your college assignments.
6. Organize your reading by using any advance information you have about the content of the material (use it to create some questions about the material you are preparing to read) and about its organization (look through the material to see how it is organized). This activity will enable you to make connections and see relationships among the various facts, and to process the material at a deeper level, which in turn will later aid recall.
7. Effective note-taking. "Less is more" is perhaps the best advice for taking lecture notes that facilitate recall. Rather than trying to jot down every detail of a lecture, it is better to listen and think about the material, and take down the main points. In effective note taking, thinking about the material initially is more important than writing it down. This is one reason borrowing someone else's notes is a bad proposition, because you will have no framework in memory that you can use to understand them.
8. Practice and rehearse. By studying and rehearsing material past initial mastery—a process called overlearning—people are able to show better long-term recall than if they stop practicing after their initial learning of the material. Keep in mind that, as research clearly demonstrates, fatigue and other factors prevent long practice sessions from being as effective as distributed practice.
9. Don't believe claims about drugs that improve memory. Advertisements for One-A-Day vitamins with ginkgo biloba or Quanterra Mental Sharpness Product would have you believe that taking a drug could improve your memory. Not so, according to results of studies. No research has shown that commercial memory enhancers are effective. Save your money!

Source: Adapted from Robert Feldman, Essentials of Understanding Psychology, 5th ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2003, pp. 204-05.

Writing Prompts

Directions: Type your responses to the items below.

1			Select two of the memory techniques described in the selection that you think might work for you. Tell which two you selected and explain how you would use them. For example, in which courses would you use them? For which type of material?
2			Explain how you could use the keyword technique to learn any two of these French words: klé (meaning key, and pronounced clay) billet (meaning ticket, and pronounced bee-yay) carte (meaning menu, and pronounced cart) couteau (meaning knife, and pronounced coo-toe) chaud(meaning hot, and pronounced show)

To the Web

Consult one or more of the following websites that pertain to the topic of the reading selection. Then answer the questions based on information obtained from the websites.

3			Pick three of the techniques and explain the type of specific information you could use each of them to memorize.

http://wwwold.ccc.commnet.edu/faculty/~simonds/memory.htm

This website is for the Learning Center at Capital Community College. The article is entitled, "The Art of Improving Memory."

4			Pick two of the memory tips that are different from the ones described in Reading Selection 3. Tell how you could each two techniques to help you in your school work.

http://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/266.htm

This website for Cuesta College's Academic Support Center describes four causes of forgetting in the article, "Why Do I Forget?"

5			What is "pseudo forgetting"?
6			List two new things (other than "pseudo forgetting") you learned about forgetting.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_00.htm

7			Pick out at least three of the techniques from this selection entitled, ""Using Your Whole Mind to Remember" and explain how you could use each to help you remember information.