From the course: Learning Study Skills

Understanding how your memory works

From the course: Learning Study Skills

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Understanding how your memory works

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- In this chapter we're going to discuss how your memory works and a variety of techniques that will enhance your ability to recall information. Before we get into the memory techniques, you need to be aware of specific principles that underlie each of these strategies. The first and most basic memory principle is repetition. Repetition helps you remember things. I'll repeat that. Repetition helps you to remember. This is the same way songs get stuck in your head. You hear them over and over. In addition to repetition, you also remember things through association. Any time you can associate something new to something you already know, you'll remember it more effectively. Another important memory principle is exaggeration. Anything that is out of the ordinary, strange or exaggerated is always easier to remember. Advertisers know this very well, and will go out of their way to exaggerate in order to make their ads more memorable to the target audience. And there's one more very important memory principle that you need to be aware of and that is visualization. You're much more likely to remember visual information. A good example of this is when you're introduced to someone. Although you may forget their name, you're much more likely to remember their face because the face is visual information. The name is abstract and is inherently harder to remember. Therefore any time we need to remember abstract information like a face, or equation or some other abstract concept, it helps to think visually to make the memory stick. In the coming lessons, you'll learn a variety of techniques that harness these memory principles to help you remember information more effectively.

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