In Rules; 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home , and School (2008), molecular biologist , Dr John Medina discusses how the brain works and how to get the most out of it. At It turn out, most people have no Idea what is really going on inside their heads. Yet, brain scientists have uncovered details about how we learn, why It is so easy to forget, and conclude that it is important we repeat new knowledge to ourselves.
Hence, Dr Medina emphasizes the use of repetition to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory, and two of his 12 Brain Rules are; “Repeat to remember” for short-term memory and “Remember to repeat” for long-term memory.
Short-term memory is the information we are currently aware of, or thinking about. It is very limited; It is believed to hold a small amount of information for about 30 second. Estimates of a short-term memory capacity vary, ranging between three to nine elements (i.e., words, digits or letters).
Research further indicates that the information found in short-term memory comes from paying attention to sensory memories and that the duration of short-term memories can be increased to an extent by using rehearsal strategies such as saying the information aloud or mentally repeating it.
Another method to improve short-term memory is ‘chunking’, which is the organization of things into meaningful sections. Realistically, the average person under normal conditions can expect to remember four items in the short-term. With chunking, it is possible to remember far more. For example, it is easier to remember nine numbers in three groups of three, rather than in a list of nine.
In contrast, long-term memory stores a seemingly unlimited amount of information for an indefinite period of time. However, our brains do not work like computer disks, storing information in neat little organized files. Emotion, context and repetition help consolidate and store patterns as memories in our brain; things that excite, frighten, depress or anger are stored more quickly because those emotions are important ancestral survival cues. In other words, memories are contextual – stored in a massive network of associations and relationships, which the brain uses to recall patterns quickly.
That is why Dr Medina states that since long-term memory works via context and association, we should use the concept of the emotion-memory link to improve it.
By Fauzia Kerai Khan. The writer is Chief Consultant, i&b Consulting.