Human Memory - Making You Uniquely You

Human memory is much more than having an experience or receiving information and it merrily makes its way to your memory bank - you need to be able to retrieve it!

On this page you will discover some tips and techniques to help you more easily recall the memories you have already stored.

Retrieving What You Have Stored In Your Memory Bank

Let's try a little experiment, so you can see why retrieval is so important. In the box below is a definition of a word. It's a word that is well known, but not commonly used. Read the definition and see if you can come up with the word that it is defining.

Were you able to answer straight away or is the word sitting there on the tip of your tongue - you know you should know it, but can't quite remember what it is? How about if I tell you that it starts with the letter 's' - does that help?

At some point you probably stored this word in your memory ... but it isn't much use to you if you cannot retrieve it - just like after you leave an exam or an interview and you kick yourself because the brilliant answer, you couldn't remember while you were under pressure, suddenly comes roaring through.

So, let's take a look at how information and experiences get into your memory, how they stay there and how you can get them back out.

By the way that word ... if it is still sitting there on the tip of your tongue is "segue".

Human Memory - Encoding

Encoding is psychologists way of saying 'getting things into your memory'.

Generally if you want to get something into your memory and consequently be able to recall it - you need to consciously give it attention. Research suggests that if you don't rehearse/recall something within 20 seconds it is lost. That's why, when you meet someone at a party, if you don't repeat their name as soon as you are introduced you'll rapidly find yourself standing there for the next 20 minutes carefully wording your sentences so it isn't obvious you don't recall their name!

Another tactic to get something encoded into your human memory is the technique known as elaboration. This is where you take an idea or concept further and add examples to it and/or associate information you already know to it.

Say you were reading an article about human memory and an example was given of how to add an example to that idea so that it helped you to click that information through to your long-term memory. (Do you get what I have done here?!) I've given you an example of elaboration :)

You can also use visualization to help you encode information ... particularly if it refers to a concrete object rather than an abstract principle. For example say you were asked to remember the words rain, juggle, hotel, dogs, cry, muscle, man.

To make it easier to recall these random words you might make up an image of a man standing in front of a hotel crying while he was juggling dogs in the rain.

Making the information personally relevant to you also helps with encoding and consequently storage and recall.

For example, say you were learning about the health benefits of a particular food and one of the reasons for eating that food was because it helped people with insomnia. If you were an insomniac you can pretty much guarantee that the name of that particular food will stick in your memory because you associated it to your own personal situation.

Or if you were an artist, you would be more likely to remember a lovely painting than a techie gadget because it is important to you.

Human Memory - Storage

Storage is the psychologists way of saying 'maintaining information in your memory'

Researchers tell us that we only have a limited capacity in our short-term memory. It is suggested that short-term human memory can only hold an estimate of seven items (plus or minus two) at a time and holds data for only about half a minute.

In fact do this experiment. Find a few people and call out this list of random words to them and ask them to repeat the list back to you (without writing it down). You'll find that most people will be able to recall somewhere between five and seven of the items.

1. square
2. dragonfly
3. sustainable
4. cloud
5. ankle
6. cup
7. alloy
8. computer
9. christopher
10. umbrella
11. hooter
12. anthropology

So, if most of us can only keep seven (plus or minus two) items in our short-term memory what can we do about it? Let's illustrate with another example.

Read this list of letters to someone - pausing at each of the hyphens:

JF - KRA - ML - OLCI - A

You may find that they can't recall all the letters.

However, if you chunk the letters (one of the tricks you'll find on the memory tricks page) and read this list out to another person - again pausing at each of the hyphens you will probably find that they do a much better job of storing and then recalling the answer:

JFK - RAM - LOL - CIA

When you block information together for people they have a better chance of increasing their storage capacity.

Another way to keep information in your short term memory is something most of us have done many times - repeating the information over and over. Someone gives you a phone number and you don't have pen and paper or your cell phone handy ... what you do is repeat the number over and over, until such time as you can write it down somewhere.

You can discover more tips here to help you avoid short term memory loss

Your long term memory can store information for days, weeks, years, lifetimes. Studies suggest that we may well store information in our memory permanently ... the problem is that sometimes people just can't retrieve it...

Human Memory: Retrieval

Finally ... the thing we all want from our human memory ... retrieval is the psychologist's terminology for getting information out of your memory

What are some tips for retrieving long term memory?

Getting something to jog your memory can help. Remember I asked if the letter 's' helped you to remember the word segue? Researchers have discovered that memory joggers like this will often cause you to more easily access the material you need.

Another way is to cast your mind back and re-experience the situation - known in psychology circles as context cues. For example, who was the 3rd last person you spoke to on the phone? To easily get that information back you will cast your mind back to the last call, where you were, who you spoke to, then you'll step back again, and then for the 3rd time until you find yourself thinking about the situation, your feelings and who you were speaking with.

Another example of this tactic (and this happens to me all the time) is when you decide you want something from another room - for example a particular book. On the way to getting it you get distracted and when you get to the new room you can't remember what you were there for. So you go back to the original room and voila all of a sudden you remember 'Aaah I was going to the lounge to get my book' and off you go again!

When you recall a memory, the same neural pathways that were fired when you were sensing the experience are stimulated. You then almost recreate or relive the same event when you remember it. You just need to be aware that sometimes your memory can misinform you. You may confuse later experiences with the original memory. For example the other day I was telling someone about some information that I had read about the dangers of using cruise control in the car when it is raining and I attributed that information to a well-recognized motoring magazine (which, in my mind, gave this information a stamp of approval).

A few days later one of those 'warning' type emails came through containing exactly that information and I flashed back to recall that this was in fact where I had actually initially read the information ... not from a trusted authority as I had told my friend. Of course, I needed to go and tell her that the dangers of cruise control in the rain could be just an urban myth!

Of course, there are causes of memory loss over and above purely not being able to retrieve the information.

Go to Improving memory from the Human Memory Page

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