Remembering Can be Easy

NII Ever get to the supermarket
and forget what you were sup-
posed to buy? Ever forget an
important business appointment,
or the name of a person you
were introduced to a mere five
minutes before?

It happens to us all the time,
and it seems the harder we try to
remember, the easier we forget.

But the good news is,
memory can be improved - it
just takes time and practise.

Psychologist Cornelius Rea
has researched the memory
process and says there are tricks
and exercises people can use to
enhance their memory. An in-
structor at Douglas College,
he’ll be outlining some of these
memory helpers during the Com-
munity Programs evening
workshop entitled Your
Memory: How it Works and
How to Improve It on
Thursday, November 17 at
Douglas College.

The workshop will explore
why we forget, and techniques
we can use to help us improve
our memories.

"Most of us have bad
memories," says Rea, "but
anyone can improve his or her
memory. It’s just a matter of ef-
fort and work - you have to keep
practicing the techniques and
skills, just as you would if you
were learning tennis or how to
play the piano."

One of the worst things you
can do when trying to remember
something is to quickly repeat it
over and over, says Rea.

 

"We all do it. Someone says
their phone number and we
think that if we repeat it over
and over we’ll remember it. But
that’s the last thing we should
do. The mind doesn’t seem to
work that way. What works
best is "spaced practice", ex-
panding the time intervals
between repetitions. For ex-
ample, you’d say the number
once, wait a brief period (such
as 30 seconds) say it again, wait
a little longer (one minute or
SO), Say it again and wait even
longer (maybe two and then ten
minutes). That technique also
works well for learning such
things as second languages,
vocabulary lists and names,"
says Rea.

Memory enhancing techni-
ques, which can be extremely
powerful if practised and used
correctly, are called mnemonics,
says Rea. A simple example of
this is the peg word system.

First you have to remember a —

basic rhyme -- one is a bun, two
is a shoe, three a tree, and so on
up to ten. Once you’ve got the
rhyme etched in your memory,
you’re on your way to being
able to recall items on that shop-
ping list you forgot at home.

As an example of how
mnemonics work, let’s say you
were going shopping for
potatoes, milk, eggs and other
items. You know full well that
by the time you get to the super-
market you’ll have forgotten
one, if not all, the items, so you
"peg" them to your rhyme.

Think: One is a bun, and im-

 

agine a giant bun full of
potatoes; two is a shoe, and im-
agine a shoe overflowing with
milk; three is a tree, and imagine
a tree with thousands of eggs for
leaves. With these exaggerated
images, coupled with the rhyme
ingrained in your mind, chances
are you'll remember those
potatoes, milk and eggs.

A variation of this would be
the "link system" where you
make up a short story linking all
the items on the list. For ex-
ample, you might visualize
animated potatoes swimming in
a bath of milk, throwing eggs at
each other.

"But just don’t go saying
these things out loud while
you’re standing there in the mid-
dle of the produce section;
someone might think you’re
crazy," laughs Rea.

Another good memory enhan-
cer is the SQ3R method, which
is especially good for study
skills, says Rea.

"Most students are known for
staying up the night before an
exam and cramming bookfuls
and bookfuls of facts into their
heads. Again, this is about the
worst thing they can do."

In the SQ3R method, students
learn to survey a chapter, form-
ing questions in their mind
which the chapter may be able
to answer. They then read, sear-
ching for these answers, reciting
and rehearsing each chapter sec-
tion by section.

continued on page 8

 

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