Why do some people have better memory than others?
Let’s say a group of four friends are in the same history
class and they have an upcoming midterm to study for. Each of the friends has
their own studying technique to help them prep for the exam.
Friend number 1 (let’s call him Dave): Dave’s method of
studying for the exam is repetition, he repeats aloud the study guide until he
has it memorized.
Friend number 2 (Sara) highlights key points in the reading
and then looks over her notes within a week of her exam.
Friend number 3 (Colby) studies while “multitasking,” whether
it’s texting friends, watching T.V., or listening to music. He also waits until
last minute to cram for an exam.
Friend number 4 (Alyssa) reads the chapter twice, once for
overview and again for clarification. Then she makes flash cards to quiz herself
by creating her own questions.
After exams were over, two of the friends did not do as well.
Can you decide which ones?
…
...
Colby and Sara did not do as well as the others. Studies
show that multitasking while studying, cramming, and just reading the chapters
are not beneficial study habits. In order to learn new information, it must be
encoded in short term memory and then stored in long term memory.
Let me first start by explaining what short term and long
term memory are. Short term memory is any information that the mind processes
within the first 30 seconds, after that it is stored away or forgotten. Long
term memory is anything after those 30 seconds, for example: an event that
occurred the day before that you remember was successfully stored in your long
term memory.
Study habits that can help transform information into long
term memory include repetition, combining a concrete image with the word,
quizzing yourself on questions that could be asked, repetition, limiting
distractions, and trying to fit an environment similar to the one being tested
in.
Using flash cards to study is a good example of memory cues.
Memory cues are used to help the person retrieve what is available and what is
accessible. A person may not know that they have memory of a certain event in
their life until they are given a memory cue.
An example of a memory cue would be watching a home video of
yourself learning to ride your bike. Before seeing this video, you remember
learning to ride at age six. The memory cue, which is the home video, helps
access the memory that is available that we often forget we had. After seeing
the video you then remember that your uncle Joey taught you to ride a bike using
your cousin Jeremy’s hand-me-down bike, and that you fell down for a good half
hour before you were able to steadily manage the bike on your own.
It is important to have both short term and long term memory
to learn new things. There are many different study techniques that are used to
help store information into long term memory. In order to access this memory,
often times a memory cue is used to retrieve the information, but often these
memory cues go unacknowledged.
Hi Kaci,
ReplyDeleteI found your article to be very interesting and informative. It is true that multitasking while doing a task diverts our attention and makes this much more difficult for us to pay attention in terms of short term memory. Thusly, this cannot be stored into long term memory without this.
Also, repeating is much more effective than studying once as stated in the post.
Nice job,
Chantal McGovern