Strategies for Memory Improvement

Strategies for Memory Improvement

1. Mnemonics are based on the principles of organisation and verbal and visual imagery

2. Visual Mneumonics

   • Method of Loci
     • Used to help remember a list of unrelated word
     • Think of a route you take regularly and then associate the words to locations on route
     • E.g. One word might be eagle and on your route you may see a post box. You could imagine the eagle sitting on the post box
   • Face-name Strategy
     • Helps to remember names
     • Think of an image linked to the name of the person
       • E.g. Elizabeth Loftus , you could imagine her sitting in a loft

3. Verbal mnemonic

   • Acrostics
     • Remembering information in a specific order as well as remembering key words
     • Create a saying or verse where the first letter stands for something else
     • E.g. To remember 6 main ethical issues- " Can do , Can't do with Participants" - Consent, Deception, Confidentiality, Debrief, Withdraw and Protection from harm

4. Organisiation is when you categorise things into groups to aid memory recall, E.g. Mind maps or Hoerarchies

5. Organisational Strategy

   • Hierachies
     • Used to improve LTM and organise material into meaningful patterns
     • Bower et al asked participants to learn a list of words
     • The experimental group saw the words organised into a conceptual hierarchy
     • The control group saw the words presented randomly
     • Those presented with the hierarchy recalled significantly more words than those who saw it presented in a random order