Defeating the Decay of Memories : Memory Exercises

Article by Rafiu Idris

The decay of memory capacity is such that an hour after trying to memorise,approximately fifty percent of the facts may have been forgotten. A day laternearly everything related to the memory exercise may have evaporated. A graphdrawn to show the way in which people forget would show a sudden, dramaticdownward curve starting about five minutes after the attempted memorisation.This assumes that full attention was given to the spoken or written materials, withunderstanding; obviously if little attention was paid or the material was notunderstood, there would be little to be remembered! The amount of forgettingpasses the fifty percent mark at one hour and falls to 90% after a day. The curvethen levels off at about 90 – 99%.

Suppose instead one could turn this curve around and increase the amount ofremembered facts with the passage of time. Studies have been carried out by DrMatthew Erdelyi of New York University which showed that volunteers tryingout his ideas, found themselves remembering twice as much information the dayafter the learning had taken place than five minutes after. From these studiespractical techniques have been evolved which enable anyone to reverse the usualforgetting curve and remember things better as time goes by.

The method is as follows. Suppose you have to attend a lecture or meeting whereit is not possible to take notes or make a recording, yet it is vital to recall thesalient points which were discussed. To ensure effective recall you must set up aprogramme in your mind which will act as a store for information. Therefore, asthe session proceeds make a mental note of key points which are raised byrepeating these subject headings to yourself in numerical order. Repeat this listfrom the beginning as each new heading is added. In this way you can keep arunning total of all the successive points that have been raised. This is possiblebecause your inner thought-stream is much faster than the vocalised speech thatyou are listening to, so you can fill in the gaps with your review programming. Italso helps to accompany each heading with a visual representation of the subjectmatter, particularly if that image is striking or humorous, i.e. memorable.

Five or ten minutes after the session ends, find a quiet place where you can sitdown and relax, then go through these key topics in your mind. Do not worry ifin this short space of time quite a lot of the material seems to have beenforgotten. Spend a couple of minutes on this exercise and never strain yourself torecall elusive items. Just make an educated guess about anything you cannot recallat that time. Repeat each of the topics to yourself just once and make a writtennote if you can. This helps the initial neurological consolidation of the memoriesfrom short term to permanent long term recordings.

About an hour later, have a second recall session, exactly as before, goingthrough all the topics without undue strain, repeating them to yourself. Newaspects and data will reappear by association. The third session should take placeabout three hours later, the next after six hours, preferably before going to sleep.This makes maximum use of the consolidation occurring during the dreamingprocess. Repeat the recall procedures three or four times on each of the secondand third days, spacing the sessions out evenly through the day.Contact Rafiu Idris

On www.HomeEducation.sg Mandala-colouring is one of the ways used by Professor Makoto Shichida in developing young children’s photographic memory and visualization abilities. Watch this video on how a typical home-practice session is conducted. It takes less than 2 minutes to complete everyday.
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