Improving your Memory

Psychological research has focused on a number of basic principles that help memory: meaningfulness, organization, association, and visualization. It is useful to know how these principles work.

Meaningfulness affects memory at all levels. Information that does not make any sense to you is difficult to remember. There are several ways in which we can make material more meaningful. Many people, for instance, learn a rhyme to help them remember. Do you know the rhyme "Thirty days has September, April, June, and November… "? It helps many people remember which months of the year have 30 days.

Organization also makes a difference in our ability to remember. How useful would a library be if the books were kept in random order? Material that is organized is better remembered than jumbled information. One example of organization is chunking. Chunking consists of grouping separate bits of information. Fox example, the number 4671363 is more easily remembered if it is chunked as 467,13,63. Categorizing is another means of organization. Suppose you are asked to remember the following list of words: man, bench, dog, desk, woman, horse, child, cat, chair. Many people will group the words into similar categories and remember them as follows: man, woman, child; cat, dog, horse; bench, chair, desk. Needless to say, the second list can be remembered more easily than the first one.

Association refers to taking the material we want to remember and relating it to something we remember accurately. In memorizing a number, you might try to associate it with familiar numbers or events. Fox example, the height of Mount Fuji in Japan - 12,389 feet - might be remembered using the following associations: 12 is the number of months in the year, and 389 is the number of days in a year (365) added to the number of months twice (24).

The last principle is visualization. Research has shown striking improvements in many types of memory tasks when people are asked to visualize the items to be remembered. In one study, subjects in one group were asked to learn some words using imagery, while the second group used repetition to learn the words. Those using imagery remembered 80 to 90 percent of the words, compared with 30 to 40 percent of the words for those who memorized by repetition. Thus forming an integrated image with all the information placed in a single mental picture can help us to preserve a memory.

增強記憶力的方法

心理學家的研究工作已把焦點對準了增強記憶的基本方法上了，這些基本方法就是：賦予意義、信息編組、建立聯想、直觀形象。知道支用這些方法是很有用的。

"賦予意義"能影響瞬時記憶也能影響到長期記憶。沒有任何意義的信息要記住就比較困難。有些方法可以使要記憶的材料賦予意義。例如，有很多人利用合轍押韻的辦法來幫助記憶。你知道"一三五七八十臘，三十一天準不差，其余月份三十天，只有二月二十八"這首順口溜幫助很多人記住了哪些月份有三十天。

"信息編組"對我們的記憶力也起很大作用。假如一座圖書館里的藏書亂七八糟，沒有順序，那這座圖書館還能有處嗎？按著一定編目的材料要比雜亂無章的混亂信息好記得多。信息編組的典型例子就是分塊記憶。每塊記憶材料是由一些零散孤立的信息所組成的。例如，要記住4671363這個數字，如果把它再分成三塊467，13，63，就更容易記住了。分類編組是另一種方法。假如要求你記住下列生詞：男人、凳子、狗、課桌、女人、馬、孩子、貓、椅子。很多人會把這些按詞義相近編成下列三個小類：男人、女人、孩子；貓、狗、馬；凳子、椅子、課桌。不用多說，第二種分三小類的辦法比第一種不分類的辦法更容易記住。

"建立聯想"指的是把我們要記的材料和我們已經精確的記住的材料之間聯想起來。要記住一個數字，你可以把這一數字與你已經熟悉的數字或事情聯系起來。例如：日本富士山的海拔高度是12，389英尺，你可以把這一數字用下列聯想方法：一年有12個月，389是一年365天再加上一年12個月乘上2（24）。

"直觀形象"是最后一種方法。研究的結果已經表明，如果讓人們把要記憶的事物都想象出生動的直觀形象，在完成各種不同類型的記憶工作中，記憶都會產生驚人的效果。有一項調查研究：要求一組受試者使用直觀形象法來記住一些生詞，在此相對照的第二組受試者只用重復法來記住這些生詞。調查結果是，凡是能用直觀形象法記生詞的人都能記住80%-90%，在之成鮮明對比的是，凡是用機械重復法記生詞的人只能記住30%-40%。這種能形成一幅完整的形象，把所有的信息都存放到腦海里的一幅畫面中去的方法，有助于我們儲存記憶材料。