The island A serves as the context cue for information about island A, whereas island B serves as the context cue for information about island B. When the 5 facts about island A were retrieved from memory, their connection with the context cue was strengthened and the connection of the remaining 5 facts with the context cue was weakened (see “Testing effect”). Schacter, D. L., Reiman, E., Curran, T., Yun, L. S., Bandy, D., McDermott, K. B., et al. (1996). Neuroanatomical correlates of veridical and illusory recognition memory: Evidence from positron emission tomography. Neuron, 17, 267–274. There are many reasons to care about your memory. Consider these: the development of a superpower memory enhances attention, focus, abstraction, naming, spatial visualization, verbal facility, language, and word acquisition. In a phrase, memory is the key to brain enhancement. If you prefer, try it with players on your favorite sports team or your favorite authors. The point is to engage your working memory, “maintaining information and moving it around in your mind,” Restak wrote.

Alhola, P., & Polo-Kantola, P. (2007). Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 3(5), 553-67. Let’s look at all three and see how we might be able to improve our memories. Encoding: Putting memories into the brain Try this demonstration: [ 2] Read the following list of words 3 times. After you have read the list, try to recall as many words as possible, minimizing your window or otherwise covering up the words on the screen:This isn't a long read but builds a solid understanding of memory. There are plenty of really interesting case studies to illustrate the use of different types of memory and memory loss. People able to demonstrate amazing feats of memory. At the other end of the scale, moving stories of those not able to remember at all or make new memories and the affect this has on them and their loved ones. Regardless of how your knowledge is tested in the end, recall testing is vastly superior to all other learning methods based on recognition. One of the reasons for this is that it automatically encourages deeper processing of the study material. In the study above, the testing group took increasingly elaborate notes as the sessions progressed compared to the other groups (without being consciously aware of it). If you previously connected these images with both France and Paris, the cue France will activate additional related cues (Eiffel tower, wine, cheese, etc.) and together they will generate more activation than France alone, which spreads to the connected memory trace – Paris. Conversely, if you studied the France-Paris pairing superficially, seeing the word France might not generate sufficient activation on its own to trigger the memory trace of Paris.

In contrast, recall is effortful because the brain has to figure out which target memory is to be retrieved. If you test yourself with recall (questions with no hints or answers to choose from), your brain has to reconstruct the pathway from the question to the target concept. In this manner, the pathway is strengthened (or new pathways are built) and as a result, the concept becomes more easily retrievable later.

As a demonstration, consider the following experiment: Students studied 10 geographical facts about each of 2 islands (A and B). [ 24] They subsequently practiced retrieving 5 out of 10 facts for island A. Afterwards, their knowledge of these facts was tested. The most basic explanation of forgetting has to do with the passage of time. Our memory traces are stored in living tissue, which inevitably changes over time. It is a well-known fact that connections between neurons deteriorate over time and as a consequence, the memory traces stored within these connections decay. Another way to examine memory is based on its duration. Working memory (WM) manipulates and stores information for short periods of time. Talking with your colleagues, discussing a point at a meeting and planning your weekend would be entirely impossible without WM. In contrast, long-term memory (LTM) serves as a long-term storage of information. Almost all of our everyday activities depend on LTM, such as remembering our way home or how to drive a car.

Eich, E., Macaulay, D., & Ryan, L. (1994). Mood dependent memory for events of the personal past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(2), 201–215. Study regardless of your mental/physical state (in different moods, with different energy levels, etc.) If you are struggling to remember an important concept during your exam, you need to activate as many connected cues as possible. For instance, try visualizing yourself in the context of studying. Be as vivid as possible – imagine yourself with an open textbook, taking notes, sitting at your desk. Simply imagining the context of encoding can be helpful to generate enough activation to successfully retrieve the memory trace. Virtually all methods commonly used in studying engage primarily recognition processes, such as reviewing (re-reading), highlighting or open-book summarizing. It comes as no surprise then that these learning methods have been shown to have little to no utility in improving retrieval success and test performance. Other methods using deeper processing such as self-explanation are far more useful than re-studying but still not as effective as practice testing. [ 36] This book presents a scientific guide to memory that covers a range of topics from our historical understanding of memory to memory improvement aids and techniques.⁣

Categorization and structuring are not the only ways that you can give meaning to information. A powerful technique that substantially improves memorization is self-explanation. [ 4] Self-explanation simply consists of asking yourself questions about the study material as you study: