Meanings for Memory – Organising Thoughts
As we discussed earlier, things are easier to remember when they mean something to us.
Try and recall the names of all the states and territories in Australia. How did you start remembering them? If you are like me, you probably had a map of Australia in your head and moved around in a certain direction (clockwise for me). Some may have started listing them alphabetically. Others from ones they have been to more recently. The point is, that you probably recalled them in some sort of systematic and organised way.
Another way we organise our memories is by categories. When studying subjects at uni, I noticed how much easier it was to remember things when I new the weekly structure of the course. When I knew that week 4 was ‘Path Analysis’ and filed what I learned in that lecture, tutorial and readings into that area of my brain…the ‘Path Analysis’ of my brain, it would make it so much easier to remember later. However, if I was running behind on tutorials (like I was last week), and I watched the ‘Path Analysis’ tutorial in a similar time frame to the ‘Factor Analysis’ lecture, I got the two ideas confused with each other. It wouldn’t surprised me if I continue to get the two things confused for quite some time now…unfortunately.
Another everyday example is when remembering a shopping list. Say you had to remember a long list of groceries. How would you do this?
Do you find yourself organising the list by types? Strawberries, apples and blueberries. Yoghurt, cheese and milk. Lamb, steak and salami.
Or are you someone who organises it by where it is in the shops. Fruit on the left of the shops. Meat at the back. Dairy in the dairy isle. Cans in the middle.
Maybe you organise by meal. You need cereal, yoghurt and egg for breakfast. Bread, salad and salami for lunch’s sandwich. Steak and lamb for dinner. Blueberries for desert.
Aside from getting hungry from thinking about food, I hope this resonates with you. Most of instinctively organise things to help us remember them.
Research agrees with this. It shows that when things are organised into categories, it helps in learning the information. This is made even better when people are told which categories the items could be organised in and told to pay attention to that[1]. The more we consciously we organise material while you are learning it, the easier it will be to retrieve later.
As we highlighted earlier, one reasons that organisation seems to work is because it makes material more meaningful and as we know this helps with memory. It can also include chunking, which we know also helps with memory.
[1] Folarin cited in (Higbee, 1996)