Memory Basics

Human memory is a very complex thing. It is unlike data in a computer. It can sometime let you down especially at what seems like the worst times. I think most people have experienced frustration when they can’t recall someone’s name or a place that they visited. Memory can also cause some confusion, especially when two people experience the same event from different view points. Before we can improve anything first we need to know basically how it works.

Everything you do during the day, even activities that are common or incidental like listening to music or watching television is processed for storage. This processing is known as encoding into memory. Some information gets into memory practically effortlessly, while other things require time. What and how long tends to vary from individual to individual. When we start encoding we use one of two types of attention. We use either selective attention where we focus on a specific situation while ignoring everything else or divided attention, trying to gather everything. Although our brain is more powerful than a super computer it does have its limits. It can not pay attention to too many different things at once. A person that focuses their attention on one single thing does better than someone trying to remember many things simultaneously.

Simply paying attention to something does not guarantee success with remembering it so encoding is further divided into three different levels.
Shallow level (gather): The first level includes the make up of sensory or physical stimuli we collect. For example, we might remember some shapes of printed characters from the newspaper, or the pitch of a particular sound in music.
Intermediate level (gather &name): The object we remember is recognized and is given a name. For example, we will identify an object that drives on the road as a car.
Deepest Level (gather, name, &associate): Includes information that is processed with not only name but also meaning. At the deepest level we make associations that are more likely to be remembered in the future.
It has been shown repeatedly that people’s memories improve when they make some type associations. For example, you could associate someone’s face with a famous person or the reverse, associate a famous individual with a friend of yours.

Psychologists studying the thinking process realize that there is more to memory than just deep processing. They have found the more elaborate the processing, the better you will remember something. The primary reason that elaboration is so successful is because it helps makes something distinct in your mind. Also used to make memories more lasting is the use of mental imagery. Some psychologists believe that mental imagery is so powerful, because people tend to remember images better than words. It has been proven that images can help individuals remember many things like learning a foreign language. An everyday use of mental imagery is remembering where you placed your remote control once you finished watching television last night.

We remember some information for years, and some we forget within a minute or even less. Besides two types of memory there are also three characteristics. Sensory memory is a type of memory that holds information extremely high in detail but is quickly lost. Some examples of sensory memory are the sights you see everyday when you’re looking out a window or the sound of a bird singing. Another type of memory is short term memory. It is information that is usually retained in storage slightly longer than sensory but still short only about 30 seconds or less. Some ways that you can improve short term memory is with rehearsal, which is the repetition of something and chunking which is grouping. If we have to remember a telephone number typically we keep repeating the number. But rather than saying it again & again in a big blob like 7835677876, you can chunk it into 783-567-7876. These techniques can be use to make information more lasting, moving it into the last type, the more stable and permanent long term memory. This is also the type we first think of when we think memory.

Memory is a subject that can fill volumes but an overview is needed to even start looking for tricks to improve it. Now that you know a little of how memory works you can better make it work for you.