Psychology
Improve Memory
Improving memory involves enhancing the brain's ability to encode, store, and retrieve information. Strategies for improving memory include practicing mindfulness, getting adequate sleep, engaging in regular physical exercise, and using mnemonic devices. Additionally, maintaining a healthy diet, managing stress, and engaging in cognitive activities can also contribute to memory improvement.
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4 Key excerpts on "Improve Memory"
- David G. Payne, Frederick G. Conrad(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The focus is on theoretical and practical issues involved in designing such programs and specific methods for improving maintenance and generalizability of training gains. There is growing evidence to suggest that memory functioning retains its plasticity into the later years and can be improved by some interventions in some elderly persons, including those with memory impairments. The research described in this chapter is designed to determine which specific interventions improve which specific aspects of memory function in which older individuals. The results reported are preliminary, but they do provide suggestive information about which types of memory-improvement programs may be most beneficial in older cohorts. Theoretical Perspectives on Memory Improvement Programs If asked, virtually every older person will admit that his or her memory is not as good as it was in earlier years (Dobbs & Rule, 1987; Harris & Morris, 1984; McGlone, Gupta, Humphrey, Oppenheimer, Mirsen, & Evans, 1990). In a national sample of over 14,000 people ages 55 and older, 74% reported difficulty remembering things during the past year (Cutler & Grams, 1988). Some older persons with memory complaints have demonstrable impairments that are associated with clinical disease states, such as early Alzheimer’s disease (AD), vascular dementia, or major depression. Others are likely noticing changes in cognitive efficiency associated with aging that do not interfere in major ways with daily functioning, are not progressive, and are not associated with frank neuropathology. Still others may have intact cognitive functioning, but are worried about normal age-related memory declines or the possibility of developing a dementing illness
eBook - ePub- David Groome, Michael Eysenck(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
In summary, while the mechanisms by which sleep influences memory are not yet fully understood, it is clear that sleep plays a particularly important role in the encoding and consolidation of previously stored memories. So no matter how well one plans one’s learning, getting an appropriate amount of sleep is also crucial to memory function.SUMMARY • Learning can be made more effective by semantic processing (i.e. focusing on the meaning of the material to be learnt), and by the use of imagery. • Mnemonic strategies, often making use of semantic processing and imagery, can assist learning and memory, especially for material that has little intrinsic meaning. • Retrieval can be enhanced by strategies to increase the effectiveness of retrieval cues, including contextual cues. • Retrieval and testing of a memory makes it more retrievable in the future, whereas disused memories become increasingly inaccessible. • Retrieving an item from memory tends to inhibit the retrieval of other related items. • Learning is usually more efficient when trials are ‘spaced’ rather than ‘massed’, especially if expanding retrieval practice is employed. • Attempts to predict our own future retrieval performance are frequently inaccurate, because we tend to base such assessments on estimates of retrieval strength rather than storage strength.• Sleep appears to be particularly important for consolidation of previously acquired memories. Avoiding sleep deprivation and ensuring regular, good-quality sleep may be one quite simple way to Improve Memory performance.FURTHER READING• Cohen, G. and Conway, M. (2008). Memory in the real world. Hove: Psychology Press. A book that focuses on memory only, but it provides a very wide-ranging account of memory performance in real-life settings.• Groome D.H. et al. (2014). An introduction to cognitive psychology: Processes and disorders (3rd edn). Hove: Psychology Press. This book includes chapters on memory covering the main theories and lab findings, which provide a background for the applied cognitive studies in the present chapter.• Worthen, J.B. and Hunt, R.R. (2011). Mnemonology: Mnemonics for the 21st century
eBook - ePub- Jonathan Firth, Nasima Riazat(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Corwin UK(Publisher)
In these and many other situations, learners have to actively retrieve information from LTM. Doing so consolidates that information and makes it easier to remember again in future. They are literally practising the process of recalling it and, as such, these strategies are much more effective than more passive alternatives such as re-reading or hearing a teacher review/summarise a topic.Misconceptions About Memory
The mid-20th century was the beginning of cognitive psychology as a field. Researchers such as Ulrik Neisser tried to move psychology away from the behaviourist approach and focus more on a person’s internal mental processes (e.g., Neisser, 1967). At the same time, early computer scientists were developing systems which stored and manipulated information. These computer programs seemed like the perfect analogy for how the mind works.However, as the earlier discussion of issues such as storage and retrieval practice suggests, there are certain important features of human memory that don’t map particularly well onto computer information processing. Storage in human memory is not a one-off process; without consolidation, information is rapidly lost from LTM in line with Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve. This doesn’t apply to computers, which can lose data, but for very different reasons. Computers also don’t store information in schemas, linked together with emotions and actions.These differences bring us onto some popular misconceptions about memory. Even though we all use memory every day, researchers have started to realise people really don’t understand their own memories well at all. And these misunderstandings may be leading to flawed approaches to teaching and learning.
eBook - ePubArchives of Memory
A Soldier Recalls World War II
- Alice M. Hoffman, Howard S. Hoffman(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- The University Press of Kentucky(Publisher)
1A Psychological Overview of Memory
Psychologists have been investigating memory for at least 100 years. It has usually been defined as the capacity or faculty of retaining and retrieving impressions from the past by means of recalling them or by recognizing them when some aspect of the impression is presented. This definition is generally accepted. A debate arises when we ask how the process works. Where and how are the impressions stored? Which impressions are stored—all of them or just some, and if just some, how are they selected for storage? What strategies are used for retrieval from memory, and what factors may impinge upon retrieval? Are these impressions susceptible to change and/or decay over time? The investigation of such issues has resulted in debate and the creation of opposing camps of theorists.In fact, two of the earliest pioneers in the study of memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) and F.C. Bartlett (1932), took different approaches to the task of attempting to understand memory processes which have not as yet been brought into one organic conception. It is possible when studying most of the contemporary scientific literature on memory to assign a study either to the Ebbinghaus or to the Bartlett tradition.1It was primarily German professors who began to study the processes of the mind experimentally. Their own training was in areas where the laboratory method was well established, such as physics or physiology. Hermann Ebbinghaus, who had been so trained, observed that the experiments being conducted by most of his colleagues were restricted to the analysis of sense perception. He wanted to go a step further and use laboratory methods to look at “the workings of the mind and to submit to an experimental and quantifiable treatment the manifestation of memory.”2He recognized the inherent difficulties in the task he had set himself. “How,” he asked, “can we keep constant the bewildering mass of causal conditions which, insofar as they are of mental nature, almost completely elude our control, and which, moreover, are subject to endless and incessant change?”3
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