Improving Remembering: Or, Studying Made Easier

When you want to remember something important, what do you do? Tie a string around your finger? Write it down? Say it to yourself over and over? Ask a friend to remind you later? We all have our own ways of insuring that we remember certain things, but some of our methods are more successful than others. Thus, when people say they have a bad memory, it is more likely that they are just bad at remembering. All memories can be improved to some extent simply by applying some of the principles psychologists have learned in their study of remembering and forgetting.

1. Have a system. Organizing your information into a system is one way to improve your memory because it cuts down the number of individual items you have to remember. It links them together so that one piece of information naturally leads to another. Here are some of the systems you can try:
   Visual imagery is one system. The brain seems to have two different memory systems--one for visual memory and one for linguistic material. The reach of visual memory is apparently enormous. Thus, if you wanted to learn a list of objects, one way to do it would be to visualize each one in combination with the next.
   In the pocket system, small objects are remembered by picturing them placed in different pockets of a suit.
   A third system is to use a code. You are no doubt aware of how easy it is to remember lyrics to entire songs or commercials, even though the simplest historical fact continually slips your mind. This is proof that it pays to organize verbal information so that one fact links itself to another. There is probably not a single American who has gone beyond the second grade and doesn't know the year Columbus sailed for America. How come? Because "in fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
   Codes work by organizing individual bits of information so they make sense when put together. Thus, department stores may conceal the prices of items by using code letters.
   Some of these systems may seem impractical for everyday remembering, but the principle can be applied to something you are doing right now--studying. When you are reviewing a text, try to learn the material in a unit, so it makes some sense. Try to recall chapter headings and subheadings. Attempt to recite details under each heading. Keep track of what you missed, and link those items in some way to the items you always get right.
   In addition to ways of organizing the material you want to remember, psychologists have discovered a number of other techniques that will help you remember material for a final exam, the names of guests at your party, a list of French verbs, or your lines for the next little theater production.
2. Overlearning. If you must learn a list of items, you are better off if you do more than learn until that point when you can recall the complete list once without error. If you continue to practice after this point, it will affect how much of the material you will be able to remember later.
3. Recitation. Recitation is repeating to yourself what you have just learned. Active recitation while you are reading leads to better retention because it focuses attention on the subject at hand. It ensures that you will be able to retrieve (not merely recognize) the material when it is needed. Thus, when subjects in one study spent nearly 80% of their reading time stopping and reciting what they were learning, the recalled what they had learned better than did a control group that read without taking frequent breaks for recitation.
4. Review. The principle of savings states that it will take you fewer trials to learn old material--even when it has apparently been forgotten-than it takes to learn new. Therefore, if you know you will be tested on material learned early in the term, it pays to review the material every so often to refresh your memory about the parts you know and to learn those parts you had trouble with the first time. The more you review during the term, the less time you will have to spend going over old material for the final.
5. Spaced practice. Studies indicate that spacing study periods is more efficient than learning material all at once, at least with some types of information. This is because your attention tends to wander over long periods of time and because what you have learned has a chance to consolidate if you take a break. Thus, four 15-minute intervals of study will probably enable better recall of the material than a one-hour study session.
6. Sleep. What we have learned about retroactive inhibition suggests that you are most apt to retain material if you go to sleep immediately after learning it. There are no intervening activities to interfere with consolidation and, therefore, retention.
7. Feedback. It helps too if you are informed of your progress, either by being told how well or poorly you are doing or by seeing the results so you can correct your errors.

(Source : McNeil, E. B. The Psychology of Human Being. New York: Canfield Press, 1974.)

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