Goethalite'005

BHome  2Remarks _Chat  #Snaps  (Address  ]Quiz mMemeberlist &Extras

DO ALL THINGS WELL. Friends I hope that this Column Of ours will surely help our Juniors in someway or the other. Thank You. Any Relevant articles and thoughts are welcomed on this web. Please send your articles to the manager to view them on the world wide web  

 This page is dedicated to our juniors. In this page we will put up interesting articles and facts which will be beneficial to the forthcoming batches

MEMORY TRICKS

What's up with forgetting? You run into your boss in the store and you can't remember her name--it's embarrassing. You're there to buy four items and you can't remember three of them--it's annoying. You're giving a speech and suddenly you can't remember what you were going to say next--it's humiliating. And let's not forget tests: All year you've been studying European history, and suddenly you're drawing a blank--who was Charles the Bald again?

Where are they stored, these memories? How come you can't find one when you need it, but later--when you're playing tennis--there it suddenly is? Of course memories aren't the brain's equivalent of videotapes that you simply haul up from some archive. But then what are they?

Memory Tricks

It may seem like a pain to have to memorize dates, state capitals, and names, but if you know the tricks, it's much easier. Here are a few simple tricks for improving your memory skills, including some useful examples of things that you may need to memorize in for school.

1. Start by chunking. According to psychologists, it's especially hard to make your brain recall long lists of separate pieces of information. To make it easier to remember a long list of almost anything, break the list into small and manageable groups, or "chunks."

For example, you might find it hard to remember all of the original 13 British colonies in the United States. But if you break them into small groups based on common traits, such as the region each colony belongs in, it's much easier. First, just concentrate on learning which colonies belong in which region. When you know each region, you know the whole set of 13.

Mid-Atlantic

1.       Delaware

2.       New York

3.       New Jersey

4.       Pennsylvania

 Southern

1.       Maryland

2.       Virginia

3.       North Carolina

4.       South Carolina

5.       Georgia

New England

1.       Connecticut

2.       Rhode Island

3.       Massachusetts

4.       New Hampshire

2. Use mnemonic devices. These are memory improvement techniques, and are sometimes quite elaborate. One common device uses words or abbreviations to compress lists of information into shorter bits that are easier to remember. Here are some common examples:

Names of the Great Lakes  

H-O-M-E-S;  Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior

Colors of the spectrum 

R-o-y G. B-i-v; Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet

Order of operations in mathematics 

Please Explain My Dull, Awful Subjects; Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction

Planets in the solar system 

Many Vocal Enemies Make Jokes Squealing Under Nervous Pressure; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

Biology taxonomy 

Kings Play Chess on Funny Green Squares; Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

Musical scale 

Every Good Boy Does Fine; E, G, B, D, F

3. Link information to visual cues. Often it's easier to remember a place or an image and its characteristics, than it is to recall a set of unfamiliar pieces of information. To memorize the information, you can try taking an item from the list and associating it in your mind with a picture or place that you know well.

For example, let's say you need to memorize the presidents of the United States since World War II. You could associate each of the presidents with a place you know well, such as your front porch:

To reinforce this, you could draw a sketch of your porch, and note on it the location of each president. This technique is so powerful that you might find yourself thinking of the presidents the next time you go to your porch.

4. Read with a purpose. Many psychologists think that the best way to remember what you read is to follow the PQ4R method. PQ4R is a mnemonic device for Preview, Question, and four R's: Read, Reflect, Recite, Review.

If you are reading a chapter in your biology book, for example, you should start by skimming the whole chapter for an overview. Then create some questions to concentrate on while you study, such as "How does photosynthesis work?" Then read the chapter.

After you've finished, reflect--think about how the chapter has answered your questions. Recite the answers back to yourself, explaining the information in your own words. Finally, go back through the book, skimming again for the main points.

Sound like a lot of work? It may take longer than a quick skim, but it's also a great way to make sure you retain what you are reading, rather than just sitting in front of the book and turning pages

How Your Memory Works

Part IV: Building a better memory
The first mechanism for good remembering is paying attention. You can't remember what you never noticed. It sounds obvious, but memory problems often start right there. At least mine do: I'm absent-minded.

The second mechanism is rehearsal, another obvious one. Saying or doing something over and over tends to make it stick. That's how most of us learned the multiplication tables, and it's the method by which a lot of education is conducted. Although it works pretty well, it's cumbersome.

If you rely only on rehearsal, people tend to look at you funny, because you're constantly muttering things like "Charles the Bald, King of France, 843 AD."

Linking and slotting
The third mechanism is where it gets interesting. The brain remembers by forming links and slotting new information into existing frameworks. This is where you can work on improving your own memory processing to make sure you'll be able to retrieve a memory later.

Mnemonics is the science of remembering. It's a bag of tricks designed to help a person remember data, especially isolated, picayune details--the type we have the hardest time holding onto.

Mnemonics relies on linking, clumping, and framing information. Greek orators invented it so they could give speeches without using notes, and people have been refining and expanding their techniques ever since.

Breaking the memory barrier
Only seven items can pass through the gate of working and short-term memory. Try to get an eighth item through, and something will scrape off. Mnemonics breaks this barrier of nature with a trick. The secret is that the seven items can be big or small. If one of the items is a suitcase, you can sneak in a pair of socks, clean underwear, and two pairs of shorts and it only counts as one item. To see this process in action, take a look at these ten letters:

G B I R A E O T G D

Rehearse them for a minute. Say them over and over again. Then cover them up, wait ten minutes, and try to write them down. Did you get them all? I didn't think so.

Now, try the same letters arranged this way:

BIG RED GOAT

I bet you could look at them for three seconds and write them all down tomorrow. It's easy because instead of dealing with ten letters, your working memory only had to take in one item: a phrase.

All the principles of mnemonics are tied up in that example.

You may gripe that you're rarely called upon to remember a string of random letters that can be rearranged into meaningful words. But let's break the process down to individual tricks. (I'm going to use the term "info-bit" to mean any individual fact you may wish to remember, big or little: Charles the Bald, the color red, the price of gold, or that time at the beach with the butter.)

149 228 210

Now you've reduced nine numbers to three numbers. Already your task is easier.

1492 28 210

Those three clumps have meaning for me. Clump one is the date Columbus sailed to America. Clump two is how old I was when I moved to San Francisco. Clump three is the number of bones in the human body. So now what I'm remembering is: Columbus discovering America, me moving to San Francisco, and a skeleton.

Here's what you do. Picture yourself going through your home and planting one topic in each room, using a mnemonic technique such as the ridiculous image. Suppose I plan to give a speech about memory, beginning with examples of memory lapses, then going into the physiology of memory, and next dealing with the Greek invention of mnemonics.

I picture myself entering my front hall and it's filled with people complaining about things they've forgotten. Next I go into my living room and there on the couch is a palpitating brain. Next I go into the dining room--Demosthenes has stopped by for lunch. There he is in his white sheets eating a tuna sandwich. Later, when I'm giving the speech, I picture going through the house again. In each room, I see the image I planted. I have no trouble keeping the order of the topics straight, because I've planted them all in one larger framework--the map of my house.

Learn mnemonic techniques like these and you'll avoid the embarrassment I often experience. I'm so forgetful I sometimes repeat myself. I'm so forgetful I sometimes repeat myself.

The members of the site are requested to send their profile and snaps to the manager of the site so that they can be included in our new column of Profiles take itmtake it