memory

 The Art of Memory

Many students come to psychologists and say that they don't remember a thing at the time of the exam. They say that they spend so many hours studying but, in any case, there isn't a lot to show for it. They ask for help with concentration. They ask whether they can perhaps be prescribed a medicine that will help improve their memory.

In fact, studying is an art and also partly a sign. Just reading a book does not equal studying.

Mnemonics:

Cognitive psychologists have spent a lot of time studying, how to study and how to make it effective. So, there are many, many approaches to it. The first approach is called Mnemonics (boost your memory, increase your brain power). Mnemonics is an old tradition also called the art of memory.

Imagine a world where paper is not easily available, at least it is not manufactured on a very large scale such as ancient Greece and imagine the people of theater as much as the Greeks did. How do people remember their lines, these plays are very long. The theater requires not only perfect delivery of the dialogue, but it also requires remembering what emotions to display, it also requires remembering the body language. So how did people remember their lines.

The secret was very simple, the artist rehearsed on the stage where they were supposed to set up the real play and used memory tricks to help them remember the dialogue.

Example:

So, for instance, let's say I am that actor, and I am trying to remember a line and I'm supposed to look here and say, to be or not that is the question, and on this side of the stage. let's say that there is a pillar and what I would do is I would close my eyes imagine that pillar, imagine that statement written down, to be or not to be and store it in that pillar. Visually in my imagination store that sentence into that pillar. So, I come on the stage, and I'm supposed to start saying, to be or not to be when I look at that pillar, so I look at that pillar and I say what do I take out of that pillar in my imagination, and it shows me to be or not to be. So, it is a simple art of association through which I practice recall and remember.

So, it is not so much the memory that is better because memory has a very, very large capacity, the sentence is in my memory, the issue is how do I recall it, so in order to recall it I make an association with something that's physical, that's visible and its present and it's useful at that particular time because it would be in front of me as a visual stimulus and so on and so forth.

So many people would just store different dialogues, in different parts of the stage, in different parts of the audience, in different parts of the chairs, or the stairs, or what have you a similar strategy is called a walk with the stars.

Many people when they're learning new vocabulary for a standardized test take a walk outside in a pleasant environment and look at the night sky, they look at different combinations of stars and different combinations of constellations and store the word pairs the vocabulary items in those different constellations and the following day they take a walk again and then try to retrieve those words and concept from those stars.

So, you can see a lot of imagination is used in this kind of studying, but these techniques work for theater, these techniques work very well for rote memorization.

PQ3R:

But what about studying where you not only understand the concept but are also able to reproduce the concept in your own words and cognitive psychologists after studying, studying for a long time came up with a simple formula and it's called PQ3R.

Let's say you want to prepare a chapter. For an example so the first thing to do is preview the chapter.

Preview:

The first step, is to preview or skim the chapter look at the chapter heading, look at the chapter objectives if they're there, turn the pages quickly look at any diagrams that might be there, look at any headings that might be there, skim the chapter try to get a general idea of what that chapter contains.

Questions:

Second step, write down a set of questions what this chapter contains, having looked at the different headings you might write down different questions about those headings and what they mean, you might see some pictures during skimming the chapter, well your questions can ask what do these pictures tell me, what are the lectures that I can draw from it, and so first step is preview, the second step is question.

Notice you haven't really read the chapter as, yet you might say oh it's a waste of my time first I preview it, then I write questions, well you must realize you're the one who coming to the psychologist saying I don't remember anything. You've been reading the chapter and then rereading the chapter and not remembering a word. So, in any case this is a much more efficient and much more time saving strategy.

So, you start by skimming or previewing. The second bit is questioning, so you write a question for almost every paragraph if you have a question, for every heading or maybe two questions for every heading. It depends on the chapter it relies upon you, and it relies upon the nature of the exam. But P and Q, preview and question. 

Read:

The third step, you do is read the chapter, but now when you're reading the chapter, you're trying to answer the questions that you have asked.

So, for instance you're reading a chapter on psychological assessment and one of the topics is called validity.  So, your question would be, what is meant by validity? How many different kinds of validity are there? So now when you start to read that chapter you're answering your question, which you've written down. Validity means, does the test measure what it is supposed to measure, so now this definition is not just being read by you it is read as an answer to a question that you've asked.

So that is the first R as told you it is PQ3R, so, the first R is read so you preview, you ask questions and then you read in order to answer those questions.

Revise:

Then afterward, second R you revise.

A lot of people when they have written down their questions and when they've read the lessons, they read them very actively with a pencil and a paper and make notes, which is great as long as you are following the sequence of preview write down your questions and then if you're taking notes, it's a good idea to take notes as answer to those questions and now. So having done the preview, having done the questions, having done the reading, now you revise. So not only should you look at your notes you should also revisit the chapter from where you got the original information.

Review:

Now the third R is review, having revised it it's a good idea to review your notes and the chapter periodically, but if you have little bit of time left before the exam the idea is to review immediately before the exam and that would activate your memory, activate the set of neurons involved in that memory and, almost all of your learning will be triggered and prepare you for the exam.

Now what is the reason behind it. Cognitive psychology has studied memory in detail and one of the ways that our memory is organized hierarchically, which means that the overall structure is first and within that overall structure that chapter is stored in terms of headings and those headings then have the relevant information and the charts and the pictures and the bar graphs with it and then within each category there is further detail.

So, because it is organized hierarchically, if we follow the same sequence while studying the preview allows us to create those headings as these folders in which information is stored and then as you open each folder you are answering the question that you have written earlier so that way it becomes very easy, because now you have an accessible file system that you can access in order to recall the information and then reproduce it in the exam.

Left brain and right brain phenomena:

Another very viable strategy is to combine left brain and right brain phenomena together when we read something that is usually done or most of it is usually done by our left brain and the right brain during that time may be involved in daydreaming or getting bored and getting tired and is pulling us back from this nonsensical exercise that we're doing.

So, one of the things that I routinely do when I want to understand something when I want to make it a part of my knowledge base, I use my right brain at the same time.

Example:

So, for instance when learning about the six virtues.

What did I do I made a circle and I divided it into six parts and in each part, I wrote down one of the six virtues, then I looked at the picture what am I doing, drawing, understanding shapes and figures is the job of the right brain.

Memorizing the six virtues is the job of the left brain, so when I'm doing both things at the same time connections are being made of millions of neurons in between the right brain and the left brain, and that makes the information accessible to me, and I can tell you very easily and very quickly what those six virtues are because I have not just wrote memorized it using my left brain. I've also drawn a diagram to explain the virtues to me now within those six virtues there are 24 different qualities, and if I draw them in different colors within each virtue chances are I will not forget those 24 qualities either and that is an advantage of knowing psychology when you're trying to study something.