How to improve your memory?

Individuals differ in their abilities to memorize. Some have more impressionable mind than others. Therefore, the materials they learn get more easily and more effectively registered as a result of which they show better abilities for recall and recognition. Is it possible to improve one’s memory? Yes, more specific aids to memory are available.

Some of the general principles that you have learned in this chapter can be applied to improve your memory. Psychologists have developed mnemonics, which means the art or system of memory strategies.

By using the techniques described below, one can improve one’s encoding, storage, and retrieval capacities.

Mnemonics

The word ‘mnemonics’ comes from the Greek word for memory and refers to specific memory improvement techniques. The ‘mnemonics’ consist of a set of strategies, which includes the use of visual imagery, method of loci, number and letter peg systems, chunking, and narratives. Most of the mnemonic techniques link the newly learnt materials with the organized set of images and concepts in the long-term memory. These firmly established LTM images serve as reminder cues for retrieval. These reminder cues are called pegs as though the to-be-remembered items are hung on these pegs. The pegs act as mediators for remembering something long and complex.

The Method of Loci

Its literal meaning is method of locations. The memory pegs in this system are parts of your images of a scene or places. It helps in remembering a number of terms serially. Suppose you want to remember the following five terms serially: house, man, tree, water, and book. You need to go through the following three stages:

(a) Visualize a series of places with which you are very familiar (for example, visualize five rooms in your educational institution like principal’s room, staff room, classroom, laboratory, and toilet in that sequence).

(b) Create a visual image of each term you have to remember (for example, create the images of horse, man, tree, water, and book).

(c) Associate the terms one by one with the places in your imagery (for example, associate horse with principal’s room thinking that the room has a big photograph of a horse, then associate staff room with man, classroom with tree and so on).

One can also use the same set of images for remembering an additional list of items. The method of loci has proven to be helpful in remembering separate terms in an order.

Number and Letter Peg Systems

Here the memory pegs are numbers or letters. The to-be-remembered items are linked to the visual images formed with numbers.

For example, you may create a rhyming system for the numbers 1 to 20. Think of words that rhyme with numbers such as 1 with man, 2 with shoe, 3 with tree, 4 with door, 5 with hive and so on. Now if you want to remember a list, associate each term serially with the images of the numbers. Suppose the first few items of the list are cake, door, chair, book, and pen. You may create associations as follows: man is eating the cake, shoe is in front of the door, chair is hanging from a tree, a door is created by arranging books, and the pen is hidden in the bee hive. In each case, you associate the number image with the items to be memorized.

Using letters as pegs follows a similar method. In this case, let each letter stand for a word that starts with that letter. The images of these words are linked to the items to be remembered. These methods not only help in remembering the items serially, but also help in recalling the 9^th, 16^th or 21^st item. Any numbered item can be retrieved from memory. It is shown that more bizarre the images of the items to be remembered, the easier it becomes to store and retrieve.

Chunking

Chunking refers to recoding information into a single meaningful unit. Suppose you want to remember a seven-digit phone number, 2350478, it will be helpful if you break the number into two chunks such as 2350, and 478. One chunk consists of four digits, and the other consists of three digits. In fact seven units of information are reduced to two longer units called chunks. By doing this you automatically increase your working memory capacity. You can further aid your memory, if you associate the numbers 2350 and 478 with some facts firmly established in your LTM. For example, in order to remember a phone number 610365, a person told me to divide the number into two chunks, 610 and 365. He further helped me to associate the numbers with some knowledge in the following way: We are busy from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, and for all the 365 days. I have never forgotten that phone number. Similarly you have to create your memory linkages. Chunking is a powerful and oft-used mnemonics to aid memory.

First-Letter Technique

If you need to remember a set of concept names, you can take the first letter of each concept, and combine them to form words, though not meaningfully. When children remember the seven colors of the rainbow in the form of’ VIBGYOR’, they use this technique. We remember the word through their abbreviations such as ICU for Intensive Care Unit, IEC for Information, Education, and Communication, and UNICEF for United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. In this method, the order of the words or concepts is important.

Narratives

In order to remember a list of unrelated words, you may create a story using these words. Suppose the items to-be-remembered are tree, water, gate, sun, and forest. The made-up story might go as follows, “A crow on a tree needing water flew over the gate under the hot sun to the forest.” While recalling the items, the story would help you to retrieve the items from the LTM.

All the mnemonics discussed above provide useful techniques to improve one’s memory. But as you know, memory is far more complex a process and these techniques have limited applications, when higher-order memory processes are involved. The contents of a college level course are far more complex.

In fact, you cannot rely on a single and simple method for improving your memory for the course. Several other additional factors and considerations are important. Ability to memorize depends on the internal characteristics of the learner, the characteristics of the items, and the methods of learning.

First of all, the person must feel the need to improve his memory, and must be highly motivated to do so. He needs to have good physical and mental health. In order to be able to store the items and recall those later, he must use efficient coding devices, pace his rate of learning, use effective methods for learning the items, rehearse the learnt material for proper storage, take rest in between learning sessions, and from time to time engage in exercises of recall to assess the status of storage. If you are motivated to improve your memory, you may consult the teachers of psychology in your college.