Strategies for Memory Improvement

LO: Discuss suitable ways to improve memory

How do you remember

things/revise??

Verbal Mnemonics

• Word or sentence is formed from the initial letters of other words– Acronyms (ROYGBI)

– Acrostic (poem or sentence i.e. Planets)

– Rhymes – group of words with identify and rhythm i.e. ‘How many days has September?’

Memorise this:

TVCIALTMSTMNASABBCITV

20 seconds!!

Now try this...

TV CIA LTM STM NASA BBC ITV

Is it easier??

What is this called?

Chunking

• Postcodes

• Chase et al 1981 – One mnemonist SF managed to remember

more than 80 digits because he could give meaning to groups of digits due to his knowledge of running times– though he had to practice lots!

LOCI (visual Mnemonic)• Identify a set of places that you

can imagine walking through, e.g. rooms in your house.

• Number of places used depends on what needs to be remembered.

• Convert each item that needs remembered into a mental image and place it mentally in a location.

• When you are ready to recall, you imagine walking through the various locations you used.

• The locations act as retrieval cues because you already know them well.

An example: WMM

Keyword method (visual Mnemonic)

• Atkinson & Raugh (1975)– For associating bits of information i.e.

picturing the two things together• A (weird) example...

– Horse in Spanish is ‘caballo’ pronounced “cab-eye-yo”

– Picture a horse with a giant eye on its back – Conjuring up the visual image should help

recall the word

• Can you think of any examples you have used?

How do these techniques work?

• Organisation• To improve your LTM it is helpful to create

hierarchies to organise material into meaningful patterns. – Putting items in order– Organisation makes memories more accessable

• Bower (1969) – asked participants to learn a list of words. The

experimental group saw the words organised in conceptual hierarchies, while the control group saw the words presented randomly.

– In a total of four trials, participants saw 112 words and the experimental ‘organised’ group recalled on average 65% correctly whereas the control group recalled only 19% correctly.

Conceptual Hierarchy

Elaborative rehearsal

• The information must be made elaborated on – making them meaningful – e.g. linking it to pre-existing knowledge.

• Elaborated memories are easier to recall because several routes can be used to reach items in memory.

• The amount of rehearsal is important but the nature (elaboration) is more important!

Narrative Chaining

Involves linking otherwise unrelated items to one another

(chaining) to form a story/narrative

Page 405 Bower & Clark

Narrative chaining is useful when you want to remember information

in a particular order

Peg Words

Involves memorising a rhyme that includes mental pegs on which you

‘hang’ the material to be remembered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwBr5URS5qw

Your task• Design a leaflet for year 11 students giving them advice on

successful memory improvement and revision strategies.

• WHAT TO DO: – Select at least 3 strategies that you think would work and

for each:– Explain how it works– Apply it to a subject (e.g. you could use this when

revising your History work by…)– Why it is a good strategy.

• Put your information together in a user-friendly leaflet. The best one will be distributed to my year 11 students.