Meanings for Memory – Visualisation: Seeing is…remembering.

Visualisation: Seeing is…remembering.

What if I asked you to tell me how many desks are in your office? How would you do this? For the very few, they might know off the top of their head. Or you might know if you were the new guy who was told to print out name plates for each desk or count how many computers are needed. But those of you lucky enough not to be stuck with these medial jobs, you’d probably start to visualise your office. “There are four desks along the back wall…four in the middle…two desks to the left of the desk…” When you do this, you use visual images for memory. At it is a great way of remembering things!

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Studies show that visual material is remembered differently to verbal material[1]. They show that verbal memory is primarily dealt with in the left part of the brain while imagery is primarily processed in the right side.[2] Just to be clear, the right and left sides of the brain are more similar that pop psychology would like us to believe. Remember doing those are your right brained or left brained tests?!

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Not only are they processed in different halves of the brain, it also has been found that they are processed at different speeds. Try verbalising the alphabet. Now try visualising each letter. Which takes longer? Visualising, right? Will this has been found by studies to be the case. Additionally, it was found that it takes longer to name a picture of an object than to read the name of the object.[3]

So if verbal is quicker than visual, than why use visual? Because it can help to improve you memory. Many studies have found that visual imagery can improve your memory…even for memory of verbal material. Images are more memorable than words. Additionally, verbal material that is also recorded in visual memory is actually coded twice (verbally and visually).

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What do we mean by visualising verbal material? My initial thought was ‘seeing’ the word c.a.t. when trying to remember the word cat. Literally, seeing the letters c..a…t. However, it actually means seeing a cat (the fury creature that features is lots of internet video).

Studies have shown that high imagery words are almost always learned faster and remembered better and people who spontaneously use mental pictures to learn word pairs and learn them more quickly.[4]

We actually spoke about this earlier. Remember the word pair, tree/fire. I told you I remembered this by seeing a tree on fire. Little did I know that I was actually visualising this verbal material. And it helped me to recall it later.

Telling people to use mental pictures helps them remember the word pairs.

The more vivid the imagery, the better the recall. Hence, I still remember a tree on fire! (It is a pretty vivid image).

Not only does using imagery to learn things help you to learn more effectively, it is also lots of fun.

It adds interest to learning and this helps you pay more attention (which we will look at next).

It can also add meaning to things we are trying to remember. Tree/fire, doesn’t mean much at all. But when you visualise a tree on fire, it adds a story to the word pair. And as we know, meaning really does help you to remember things.

It isn’t only words this can help with. Sometimes, I remember numbers by visualising them on a keypad. But I find that once I hit 4 numbers, I struggle. I’m not sure why.

[1] (Higbee, 1996)

[2] (Higbee, 1996)

[3] (Weber & Castleman, 1970)

[4] (Higbee, 1996)

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I associated their names with something else which helped me to remember them.

How many of you are boat people? Or plane people?

Starboard and Port. These are port/plane for left and right. And each of them has an associated colour (green and red). Ever looked out of the plane window at night and noticed the lights on the end of the wing. The left one is red. The right one is green.

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But how do you remember?

There is a simple phrase. “There is no red port left”. This is an example of using association to assist in remembering. Port = left = red.

But association doesn’t have to be conscious. How many times have you looked at something and realised, ‘that reminds me of…’.

This is usually due to a unconscious association. You have somehow paired two things in your mind.

Ever met a person had have an instant like or dislike for them and not know why. Only to realise later on that they reminded you of a good guy or bad guy from a movie and that’s the only reason. I once worked with a higher up that reminded me of “number 1” from one of the Star Trek Series’. I think that gave him more authority and respect in my eyes!

While association helps by giving meaning to things, it also helps by helping us to cross-reference our memories.

Remember how we spoke about long-term memory being like a file cabinet. Cross-referencing is like having the file in two folders. For example, Sheryn was filed under ‘people from TAFE’ and ‘types of football’, perhaps. Additionally, it created more pathway for me to remember her name. “What’s that girls name, sounds like a football brand. Puma. It’s not a Puma (In my best Arnie voice). Nike. No. Ah, Sheryn.”

How to use association to remember things?

That leads us into how you can use these associations to remember things.

When I can’t remember Sheryn’s name, I think about the paths that could take me there.

You can do this for other things that have seemingly slipped your mind.

Remember, long-term memory is unlimited. It is a matter of finding where you filed that memory. Like we have discussed, filing it in the right place helps a lot, but when you can’t find it in the place where you thought it was, association helps us to ‘search’ for it.

Say you want to remember a person you went to school with.

You could try and remember the classroom where you sat with them. You could try and remember other people in the class. You could try to remember the teacher’s name. You could try to remember what they looked like, what clothes they wore. One of these things might have formed an association with their name.

Research has found that this works for remembering names of high school classmates[1]. 

It has also been shown to help people to remember details of crimes they have witnessed. We all know how important memory is to us in everyday life. But accurate and detailed information from eyewitness is crucial to police investigating a crime. Some clever scientists looked how to enhance the memory of eyewitnesses to a crime[2].They used a technique called a cognitive interview. Sounds fancy, right? Well it is but it is also very simple. Essentially, instead of asking witnesses to focus on the particular bit of information you want them to remember, like the description of the getaway car, you ask them broader questions. Firstly you ask them to describe the general scene. The surrounding environment. Was the street crowded or empty. Were their tall buildings. The weather. Was it raining. Was it sunny. Was it windy. Nearby objects etc. Was their a food truck or a post van. For this to work, the interviewee must not hold back. Everything must be reported. Next the interview gets the eyewitness to do some time travel. Not literally but instead of just remembering the events in the order they happened, they could try and remember them in reverse. Or stating at the most memorable part and thinking backward and forward form that point. Lastly, the eyewitness is asked to recall the event from the perspective of others. By thinking of something that was seemingly irrelevant, they were able to remember something more relevant. It was found that people remembered up to 35 percent more using this approach when compared to standard police interviews.[3]

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Conclusion 

Association is another way that things gain meaning. Association doesn’t have to be conscious but can also be unconscious. While association helps by giving meaning to things, it also helps by helping us to cross-reference our memories. Thus, associations can be formed intentionally helping us to better encode our memories. They can also be used to recall information that has been filed and associated unconsciously.

[1] (Williams & Hollan, 1981)

[2] (Williams & Hollan, 1981)

[3] (Geiselman, et al., 1986)

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