Think about how you tried to remember the images in one of the
memory games. Some
people try to remember them just by repeating objects over and over, like this:
pen, book,
cat, can of tea and so on. If you tried that, you were using what scientists call
your usual memory. When you look up a digits or telephone number and repeat it over and over until you dial it,
you're using your usual memory. Your usual memory is great for jobs like remembering a
phone number for a few minutes.
But five minutes later, after you made a phone call you probably
won't be able to remember the number. Your usual memory can hold a bit amount of
information for a relatively short time. Repeating a list of things over and over lets you
remember some of the items on the list for a little while. But it's tough to store twenty
different things in your working memory and remember them long enough to write them down.
One way to remember more things for a longer time is to use to
"elaborative encoding." "Encoding" is another word for transforming
something into a memory. "Elaborative encoding" lets you connect new information
to memories that you already have, and that helps you remember the new information. It can
help you move that list of objects out of your working memory and into your long-term
memory. (Long-term memory is just what it sounds like: memories that last for a long time
-- days or months or years.)
When you tell yourself a story and imagine what's happening, you are doing a couple of
things.
First, you are connecting the different pictures so that when you remember one, you
remember the others too. If you remember "cat," you have a good chance of
remembering "bicycle" and "dog" and "C" for Charlie. It's
hard to remember all the items in a list where nothing is connected to anything else. It's
easier to remember when one item is attached to a whole lot of others.
Second, you are making a mental picture that includes all these different things.
Making a mental picture helps you remember something later.
You may discover that making up a story didn't help you remember all the objects -- but
it helped you remember some of the objects for a lot longer. When you made a mental
picture of the objects, you used your long-term memory , and that picture stuck with you.
Test your memory! Try one of the memory games from this site
Eidetic memory game and Good
memory game. Also you can develop your 3D imagery by using
3D technical drawing puzzle.
Experience can help to develop a memory
We are awash in a sea of words and
pictures. Most of the words they hear
are delivered to them with the same intensity and in basically the same
environment as the other words that they hear. After a while, it all becomes
somewhat of a muddled soup. When we examined the impact of reading versus doing
in science classes, we found that the students in lab-type experiences recalled
far more of the different kinds of things that they had studied than when they
had simply read about them and discussed them in class.
Unfortunately, while the concrete experiences helped the people remember
what they had done, they did not help the students remember the names of the
different science concepts they had demonstrated. A combination of mnemonic
encoding combined with concrete experience seems to be the best way to proceed
when students are expected to recall the names of the things that they studied
as well as specific characteristics that could be demonstrated through
activity-based approaches to instruction.
Eidetic memory articles
Eidetic online games
Free online games
See next games
Eidetic memory (Photographic memory) found in 5% children. These children can
remember an entire page of writing in an unfamiliar language after only seeing
it for a short period of time. Only a few have eidetic memory in adulthood.
Games
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