CHAPTER FOUR

Overview of General Methods

In 1975, researchers Fergus I. M. Craik and Endel Tulving at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, designed a series of ten experiments to explore the levels of processing within the human memory. They presented their participants with a series of sixty words, and asked them one of three questions about each word.

One of the questions asked strictly for visual processing of the word: “Is the word in capital letters or small letters?” Another asked them to consider the sound of the word: “Does the word rhyme with?” The third question required the participant to think a little more deeply about the word: “Does the word fit into this sentence?”

After they were quizzed in this manner about the original sixty words, the researchers handed each participant a list of 180 words to consider. The first sixty words were mixed into this much longer list. Their task: Pick out the words that had been in the original list of sixty.

What do you think happened? If you guessed that the participants remembered many more of the words about which they’d been asked the more meaningful question—if the word fit into a specific sentence—then you are correct. The deeper question, involving the meaning of the word, required a process that scientists call elaboration rehearsal, making the participant think about what the word meant and how it would be used, rather than simply about what it looked like or how it sounded.

This breakthrough research was the first to explain the workings of memory in a less structural, more process-oriented fashion. Where prevailing theories about memory at the time focused on the separation of short-term and long-term memory and the requirements for a memory to move from one to the other, this new study showed that the way the mind actually processes the memory has a great deal to do with its retention.

Craik and Tulving saw the memory’s ability to process information in three ways: structurally, phonemically, and semantically.

1. Structural processing encodes an item’s physical properties without examining its meaning or context. In this case, participants were asked to respond to questions only about the word’s typeface or the size of its letters.
2. Phonemic processing involves the encoding of the item’s sound. Participants had the opportunity to respond to a question about whether the word rhymed with another one, a reference to the way the word sounds. They also observed that people said the word aloud, a short-term technique to help them hold the word in short-term memory long enough to respond to a question. (Both structural processing and phonemic processing involve what the researchers called shallow processing—a surface exploration of a word or object that does not give the word meaning or context.)
3. Semantic processing encodes the meaning of a word, connecting it with other words or images that have a similar meaning to the participant. This is a form of deep processing, making a more meaningful analysis of the information and linking the word or object with another memory, concept, or word of which the participant has previous knowledge.

This study opened up new avenues for scientific exploration of the formation of memories. At the same time, it pointed the way to new methods for improving the brain’s ability to retain information. No longer a mechanical concept, memory retention moved into the world of context and semantics, creating mental hooks that linked one kind of information to another for stronger memories and longer retention.

Engaging the Whole Mind

Students and adults are expected to learn a great deal of information over the course of a lifetime. A new job can require long hours of training or retraining, a quest for a law degree can mean intensive memorization, and the process of earning a medical degree means acquiring copious amounts of facts about the human body and its detailed systems.

If you’ve ever sat through a dull meeting and realized you retained none of the information once it was over, you know that it’s important to engage your mind—not just a little bit, but in total—to take in information and keep hold of it after the event has passed.

As you begin your exploration of ways to improve memory, here are some of the ground rules that will be useful no matter which method you embrace.

1. Pay attention: Concentrating only on the task at hand will improve memory, whether you are memorizing state capitals or trying to recall where you parked your car. Something as potentially dull as memorization virtually begs the mind to go elsewhere during the process. Sticking with the task and staying in the moment definitely helps memory—after all, you can’t remember what you never saw, heard, or experienced. If you’ve ever sat through a meeting at work and suddenly realized that the meeting is ending and you can’t remember what tasks you were assigned to do, you know what happens when you stop paying attention.
2. Practice active learning: If a student reads all the material assigned, he or she might absorb some of it and retain it. If the student takes part in discussions about the material, takes notes, and engages with other students in the process of learning, the student will be much more likely to retain the bulk of the information. Active learning gives you the opportunity to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the information you’ve been given, creating a stronger relationship with the material that leaves a memorable impression.

   If you’re taking a lecture course or sitting through a meeting that does not offer much opportunity to ramp up your participation or interaction with the subject matter, you can create opportunities for active learning on your own.

   • Be sure that you are prepared for the class (or meeting) by completing any assigned reading beforehand. This allows you to spend the class learning about the concepts you’ve read, instead of feeling frustrated that you don’t understand any of the references the professor has mentioned—leaving you unable to ask questions without feeling embarrassed.
   • Make a sound recording of the class and transcribe the recording later. This forces you to pay attention to the words, giving you the opportunity to think about what has been said.
   • After the class, make a note of the concept that seemed the clearest to you, and one that seemed the least clear. Spend some time looking up information about the least clear point to deepen your understanding of the topic.
3. Rehearse: You may never be called upon to actually stand and recite the information you learn in class, but that doesn’t mean you should not say it aloud anyway in the privacy of your own home or office. Using all of the appropriate senses to learn the information can make a significant difference in retaining that information in memory.

   When you took the memory test in Chapter Three, did you say the words or the numbers aloud as you worked to commit them to memory? This kind of repetition, including the use of another sense besides sight, makes a stronger impression on your memory and helps you keep the information at the top of your mind. Further rehearsal—more repetition over a longer time period—helps you retain it beyond the few minutes in which you needed it.

   Think, for example, about all of the song lyrics you may know, even if you have never memorized a poem without music in your life. The process of singing along with the recording, hearing the song over and over, and connecting the music and lyrics together turns that lyric into a long-term memory. Some people remember song lyrics they learned in nursery school well into old age, even if they do not hear that song again in adulthood. (You’ll find more on songs and rhyming as a memory technique in Chapter Nine.)

4. Rework what you learn: Rehearsal of information can also involve a sort of translation, taking a concept and rephrasing it aloud in your own words. This can be particularly effective in a study of a complex topic, or in learning a new skill or a technology on the job. The jargon used in textbooks and instruction manuals can be virtually meaningless to you on its own, but once you’ve given it meaning by rephrasing it in your own words, it becomes understandable and memorable. You have used a deeper processing method called reworking, turning the information into something your mind can embrace.
5. Use visualization: Using a vivid mental image to link with a fact or a piece of information can help you remember it. Vivid images are easy to recall when you need to bring back a specific memory, so they are particularly important tools in turning a short-term memory into a long-term one. You will find much more on the visualization technique in Chapter Six.

Scaffolding

The memory improvement techniques discussed in the chapters that follow all hinge on a basic premise: linking new memories with things you already know. Experts call this scaffolding, a process of building on prior knowledge to form bonds between old memories and new ones.

Have you ever wondered when babies begin to remember? Scientists have determined that children do not form explicit memories—a full account of a specific event, for example—until they reach about three years old. There’s no question that babies begin to remember things much earlier, however. In fact, researchers have found that newborn infants react to their mother’s voice within minutes of birth, because the infant heard that voice continually while in the womb.

The ability to remember is established even before birth, though the meaning and context of such memories takes years to develop. Babies’ minds learn to create patterns of sensory impressions that become specific people, items, or experiences, based on repeated attempts that teach them basic principles. If you’ve ever watched a baby drop a toy from the high chair’s tray to the floor over and over again, you are seeing a memory being constructed at that very moment. The baby lets go, the toy falls . . . and Mommy picks it up and gives it back. These events become linked in the baby’s brain, and learning takes place. The baby will not remember the specifics of the day, time, location, or even the toy itself—what researchers call the long-term explicit memory—but he will remember that Mommy picks up toys that drop.

Once babies and young children build a foundation of these basic memories from a very early point in their lives, they pile on new memories at a rapid pace. Knowing one thing—that Mommy will pick up the fallen toy—leads to learning about a related thing: Mommy also will pick up food that falls. Using this information as if it were scaffolding, the baby soon learns that Mommy will lift him out of the high chair when he wants to get down. All of these bits of knowledge center on activity in the high chair, the familiar point of reference that forms the basis for learning.

Building the scaffolding from an established memory to a new one can take conscious effort, especially when you are working to take in a lot of new information at once. Techniques like association (Chapter Five), visualization (Chapter Six), and the method of loci (Chapter Eight) are based on creating linkages between what you already know and what you want to learn.

Organize to Remember

Your desk may be cluttered, your garage may need a cleaning, and your attic or basement may cry out for a good purge, but your mind requires a certain amount of order to be able to form lasting memories. Your ability to organize information in meaningful ways can go a long way in helping you retain and recall memories when you need them.

What if you had to memorize a string of forty-five letters, all strung together at random? Such a list might look like this:

alskfupcwelkjowirutjnclcjdowhvbgkdnwkdycogneo

How hard would this be to memorize? For most people, it would be virtually impossible to accomplish.

But what about if you had to memorize this forty-five-letter sentence:

Marley and Josiah could not wait to play in the new snow.

Suddenly it’s not hard at all to memorize forty-five letters. A collection of letters makes sense when it’s broken up into words, each of which has a meaning you can recall instantly.

A number of memory improvement techniques use the basic concept of order to help you remember information.

• Chunking (Chapter Seven) links bits of information to one another to form associations that help you to remember the contents of each group.
• Rhyming (Chapter Nine) uses sound to match new ideas with existing memories, creating an immediate auditory link between words.
• Acronyms (Chapter Ten) take the first letter of each word and bring them together to create another familiar word, which triggers recall when you see or hear it.

All of these methods employ mnemonics, devices that are used to improve memory. A mnemonic is a way of reconstructing the content of the new information, with the intention of tying it to knowledge you already have.

The human mind remembers some kinds of information more easily than others:

• Spatial information: It’s easier to develop a mental picture of an item in a specific space than to retain an image of it in isolation. For example, you can remember landmarks around your car in a parking lot more easily than the license plate numbers of the cars nearby.
• Personal information: Facts that relate to you personally are far more fascinating and memorable than those about another person. This is not because human beings are self-centered and conceited; it relates to one’s sense of identity—and the fact that most people rehearse information (see more on this earlier in this chapter) about themselves repeatedly as part of their natural process of thought.
• Surprising information: An unexpected twist will stick with you long after the plot of the rest of the movie has passed. Think, for example, about the famous twists in films like Citizen Kane, The Sixth Sense, and The Crying Game (no spoilers here!). Likewise, surprises in life remain fresh in your mind for decades after they take place.
• Physical information: Why do you recognize faces, but you can’t always remember names? Physical characteristics come more easily to mind than words—a fact that helps you recognize friends and acquaintances as they approach, while also allowing you to react quickly when you see danger in your path. If you can spot poison ivy along a trail, an icy patch on a road, or a dog approaching you with bared teeth, you can thank the quick recall that comes with memory of physical characteristics.
• Sexual information: This probably requires no explanation, but if you can attach a sexual innuendo to a concept or list of things to remember, you may never forget it.
• Humorous information: Happily, human beings love to laugh, and you can remember a funny story, a pun, or a witty remark and repeat it to friends over and over. When you connect a funny rhyme or a silly acronym to something you need to remember, your chances of recalling it later will increase dramatically.

Mnemonics can take many different forms, but if the one you use links to any of these specific kinds of information, you will create an association that may still be with you in the last days of your life.