Encoding, storage, and retrieval OR about MEMORY, simple

As sharing is caring, in this article you will find some good lectures and curious experiments.- FusionWorks

One of my favorite definitions of ”Memory” is that this represents the process of maintaining information over time. Our memory helps us discover the world. We do not need every time a lot of information to absorb and to try to figure it out dealing with classifications or comparison.

There are moments when, being too engaged in an activity we forgot some elementary staff like to eat, to respond to a message, etc. In the era of information, it is a priority to understand fast and proceed to complete future tasks instead of analyzing what do we miss.

A large part of the research on memory is based on experiments conducted in laboratories. Those who take part in the experiments — the participants — are asked to perform tasks such as recalling lists of words and numbers. Both the setting — the laboratory — and the tasks are a long way from everyday life. In many cases, the setting is artificial and the tasks fairly meaningless. Does this matter? How can this help?

Memory is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), among other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval.

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Increasing your memory may help you in different manners. Firstly, you will force your brain to think, you will exercise it and make it stronger. Secondly, you will be much more productive. And third — your general well-being will increase as a result of self-esteem. Does this sound perfect? It is also easy to achieve!

• Associate — combine what you want to remember with what you already know. You can associate places with people, names with songs, phone numbers with birthdays.
• Practice — our brain has supernatural powers if we have enough patience to develop them. We can calculate in mind, memorize a voluminous number, or complete sudoku, what do you choose?
• Focus — when we learn something new and quickly forget, we blame our memory, when in fact we were not paying attention to what we were doing. When you do something (or learn) dedicate yourself to the activity 100%. Being fully involved you will be surprised by the results!
• Chewing gum — some research has shown that chewing gum improves memory. Thus, chewing gum during an exam can make it easier to remember everything we have learned.
• Build a palace of memory — it’s an exercise for hundreds of years, but just as great. According to this technique, we are supposed to remember more easily anything with the idea that we have visual memories related to that something (it doesn’t matter if it’s real or imaginary).
• Avoid stress — felt for a long time, stress affects the normal functioning of the brain, therefore decreasing memory capacity. As much as we can, let’s avoid it, finding more time for relaxing.
• Get enough sleep — if your sleep doesn’t reach at least 7 hours a night, your brain has nowhere to take energy to function wonderfully.
• Eat healthily — scientific studies have shown the link between food and memory. So, in order to improve it, we need vegetables, fruits, seafood, and green tea.
• Keep fit — if your body is healthy, so will your mind. Exercising 20 minutes a day, we will look more beautiful not only physically, but also in terms of memory.
• Read — you can improve your creativity by reading something special and imagining your video. In this way, you put your brain to work, and during the construction of images, you also develop your memory.

Yes, it seems like all these techniques are viable and all of them may be experienced very simply, but could these also feed the Misinformation Effect?

In a famous experiment conducted by Loftus, participants were shown video footage of a traffic accident. After watching the clip, the participants were then asked a number of questions about what they had observed, much in the same way police officers, accident investigators, and attorneys might question an eyewitness.

One of the questions asked was, “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” In some instances, however, a subtle change was made; participants were instead asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed into” each other. What the researchers discovered was that simply using the word “smashed” instead of “hit” could change how the participants remembered the accident.

A week later, the participants were once again asked a series of questions, including “Did you see the broken glass?” Most of the participants correctly answered no, but those who had been asked the “smashed into” version of the question in the initial interview were more likely to incorrectly believe that they had indeed seen broken glass.

How can such a minor change lead to such differing memories of the same video clip? Experts suggest that this is an example of the misinformation effect at work. Other interesting experiments that seem curious.