The Science of Retention

By Timothy Hayes on January 31, 2015

“I’m just not a good tester.” “I can’t remember everything, but I get the gist.” “Studying doesn’t help me.”

Maybe you’ve heard those words. Maybe you say them often. Regardless, some people really do have trouble with memory.

Memory loss is any lapse in memory, obviously. Most of you have experienced it in many forms. Drinking and drugs can cause memory loss called “blackouts” or periods where the person under the influence of the substance is active and may move about, talk, and do many things during this period, but the brain has stopped forming memories for a short time. Long time abuse of these can cause chronic memory loss.

Another form of memory loss that may be familiar to athletes is concussive memory loss. Concussion is when the brain impacts the skull. This can cause major or minor damage. In most instances it causes disconnection between certain brain areas creating anterograde amnesia or an inability to form memories or concentrate.

While these examples are extreme conditions of memory loss, they do have some bearing on basic everyday forgetfulness.

Synapses occur when the dendrites of one brain cell or neuron connect with the axon terminal of another. This causes a small chemical reaction which in turn creates a small electric current. Photo courtesy of Nret at en.wikipedia.org

All of these are caused by a failure of certain parts of the brain to communicate with one another in what are called synapses. Synapses occur at hundreds of times a second in your brain and are responsible for basic brain function and thought. When a synapse does not fire or fires incorrectly, memories can be lost or altered.

Memory is a complicated field of neuroscience and not much is known still after decades of research about memory. The brain stores memories throughout the brain tissue in your head. Memories get placed in different regions according to how they are encoded and when. Sometimes the memories are consciously recalled and other times they are called up by a stimulus like smelling perfume.

When most students test, they use conscious retrieval to recall facts or ideas to pass. This conscious memory storage and retrieval can easily recall very large amounts of information especially if the neuron pathways are used frequently.

However, it is easy and more intuitive to recall using unconscious recall. Have you ever seen a question and not been able to rationalize the answer, but recognized one as correct? Many call it “going with your gut” but it has a whole lot to do with unconscious recall.

To retain better, some have suggested chewing gum or eating when you study and chewing the same flavor of gum or eating the same food when testing. This may have some actual benefits. Music and mood have also been shown to have an effect on recall.

This is called forming a schema. A schema is a structuring of memory through association. Many have probably used this in some form or another.

Acronyms are an excellent example of a schema. By making a word or sentence from other ideas, memories can be encoded more complexly and better. If you can make the acronym funny you should be able to recall it better.

Some schema are incredibly intricate. These schema, called mind palaces, are spatially organized ideas and symbols in your head. To do this, you need to imagine a house. In this house are an infinite number of rooms. These rooms are filled with unusual things that helps the person recall memory. Each room or item in a room signifies an object.

A different version of this includes using the Person-Action-Object method. This form of storage relies on a code for things you want to remember. The user imagines a person, usually famous or known to them, doing something with an object.

So you might think of Arnold Schwarzenegger dancing ballet with a vacuum cleaner. In and of itself, this image, although comical, means nothing, but when encoded with a memory it proves hard to forget.

If you need some simpler recall methods, try taking better notes. Reviewing information that you have encoded helps it get stored in long-term memory especially if it is soon after hearing it.

It increases the usage of the pathways and makes them so that they become more intuitive upon seeing key words or phrases on tests. These visual cognitive cues reinforce what you’ve already learned. So take good notes to review later. If you want to know how, check out this link.

Aside from all these tips and ideas for remembering things, some people really don’t test well. These people may get excessively nervous for exams, even after having prepared very well. They may panic and second guess an answer they at first felt very confident in.

These people may have even performed very well in class, engaged with the professor very often and may know the content very well. These people may have test anxiety. This is a serious, debilitating condition that is very treatable. With the proper care and help, test anxious people can become excellent students.

If you have any ideas please feel free to share them along with this article with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. If you’d like to learn more about effective note taking, check out my article on the topic here.

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