The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

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Anderson, M. C., and McCulloch, K. C. (1999). Integration as a general boundary condition on retrieval-induced forgetting. J. Exp. Psychol. 25, 608–629. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.25.3.608 This is a topic that has long fascinated me, and I’ve written a lot about memory previously on this blog. However, I wanted to create a guide that would combine and integrate everything we know scientifically about memory, and distill that knowledge into practical advice.

Do you remember what you had for dinner two weeks ago? Now choose your favorite trip from a couple of years ago. How much do you remember from that trip? The chances are that you do not remember what you had for dinner but you do remember something about your trip, although it took place much earlier than the meal. Bower, G. H., Clark, M. C., Lesgold, A. M., & Winzenz, D. (1969). Hierarchical retrieval schemes in recall of categorised word lists. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 323–343.

A comprehensive guide to understanding how memory works, how memory forms, the mind-body connection, and more! One would expect that the students who deliberately studied the words would perform better than the categorizing and arranging groups, who did not make such effort. However, this was not the case. The categorizing and memorizing groups performed equally well in the test, whereas the arranging group performed worse than the other two groups. What I find so extraordinary is the affect technology and distraction have on our memory. I have sensed this for many years, especially considering the explosion of social media addiction. Richard Restak validates my sense of the digital world we live in. Why remember anything when you have Google at your fingertips? visualize the details of the context where you need to remember the intention (objects, buildings, people) To store information better, you need to be aware of how you forget. Here are the main possible causes of forgetting:

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard : Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.If possible, align your state and context when you’re encoding the information to when you need to remember it. If this isn’t possible, study in more environments/situations to make your memories more robust! In contrast, recall is effortful because the brain has to figure out which target memory is to be retrieved. If you test yourself with recall (questions with no hints or answers to choose from), your brain has to reconstruct the pathway from the question to the target concept. In this manner, the pathway is strengthened (or new pathways are built) and as a result, the concept becomes more easily retrievable later. Encoding is a process of imprinting information into the brain. Without proper encoding, there is nothing to store and attempting to retrieve the memory later will fail. One way to improve encoding is simply to repeat the information more times. Scientists who study memory call these repetitions “rehearsals” of the information.

How can I remember such an inconsequential and innocuous experience when over four decades later, often I can’t remember what I had for dinner the previous evening? Now I know thanks to this book!

Szpunar, K. K., Khan, N. Y., & Schacter, D. L. (2013). Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures, 110(16), 6313–6317. Process information deeply. Pay attention to the deeper meaning, make connections to what you already know and paraphrase rather than take notes verbatim.