Category Archives: How to develop your best memory

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These three strategies will make you smarter

A link is one of the best ways to remember a list of things. The link strategy is best suited for learning lists of things. The person forms an image for each item in a list of things to be learned. Then, you picture each image as interacting with the next item on the list so that all items link in imagination. To illustrate, suppose a person needed to remember to take her laptop, IPad, briefcase, customer report, power cord, and laser pointer home this evening. She could imagine a scene in which she tucks the customer report inside the laptop. The laptop is inside the briefcase. The iPad is on top of the briefcase and with the power cord wrapped around the briefcase and iPad.   At the end of her workday, she mentally unwraps the interactive image that makes it probable that recall of any item on the list will queue recall for the others.

A story is easy for you to create and remember

Using stories to remember is also a simple and effective memory strategy. This simple mnemonic is a use of stories constructed from a list of words that one wants to remember. In this method, the story highlights the words of importance. When the person recalls the story, they also recall the words of importance.

For example, suppose a student is required to bring scissors, a three ring binder, a calculator, and a red marker pencil to school. In order to remember these items the student could construct the following story to help her or he remember these items. “A king put his calculator in a three ringer binder and draws a red bullseye on the binder with his red marker. Afterwards the king throws his scissors into the bullseye.

Should you use acronyms to improve your memory?

Among all mnemonics, the one that people most often report using is the first letter method. It is similar to the story mnemonic except it involves using the first letters of the pertinent words to construct acronyms. For illustration suppose a high school student is trying to remember that borax is made of boron, oxygen, and sodium. The student would take the first letter of each component and construct the word BOS. Then when he or she attempts to recall borax she or he will simply remember the word BOS and generate the ingredients from each letter in the word.

The basis for this post comes from Byrnes, J. P. (2009). Cognitive development and learning in instructional contexts. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

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How to Increase Your Memory Power

visualization

Mindmaps helps us remember

There are numerous strategies used to improve long-term memory. By itself, imagery has considerable value in helping make information memorable because, researchers indicate our minds encode images with both visual and audio tags for later retrieval. To experience the power of imagery use a mind-map, for example, the next time you need to remember the definition of a word or concept. People often use imagery in combination with other strategies for remembering complex concepts such as the uses of the chemical benzene or the spelling of words. In conjunction with a group of strategies for enhancing memory called mnemonics it is a powerful tool for improving memory performance.

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How To Use Simple Methods To Improve Your Memory

brain nerves

Connected neurons create our memories.

Many strategies can make simpler kinds of information more memorable. First, maintenance rehearsal is the direct recycling of information in order to keep it active in working memory. We perform maintenance rehearsal to keep a telephone number active in our mind until we dial the number. Likewise, we use maintenance rehearsal to keep a street address active in working memory until we can drive to our location. While maintenance rehearsal is effective, the benefits seldom last long.The capacity of our working memory is limited to about seven pieces or chunks of information. Researchers have shown that ordinary people can learn chunking strategies to improve the capacity of their working memory. In other words, people can improve their working memory by breaking information into larger and larger units of meaning. This is one of the reasons that people normally recite their phone number and social security number in three segments thereby improving their memory processing.