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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)
An example:
WMM
• 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.
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
Minerals
Metals
Stones
Rare
Common
Alloys
Precious
Masonry
Platinum
Copper
Bronze
Sapphire
Marble
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=Bw
Br5URS5qw
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.