by Daniel Clark
In the previous chapter, we have learned about speed reading in detail with a sufficient number of training methods and exercise that will help you increase your reading speed along with understanding the essence of the article or book you are reading. Reading is the primary thing which we have already mastered. But after reading and understanding the content, we need to remember and apply it further for successful learning. Coming chapters will discuss in detail about memory, its importance, and several training methods that will help you improve your accelerated learning.
What Is Memory
In ancient times, many philosophers in the world began to explore the mystery and wanted to enter the brain complex magical world. In Ancient Greece, the famous philosopher Plato discussed the psychological phenomenon of memory in his book the Phaedo, and the great philosopher Aristotle made a hypothesis which roughly believed that people's feelings, thoughts, and memory are all "stored in one heart."
The first systematic experiment on memory in the history of psychology was conducted by the famous German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. He discovered the remarkable power of the human brain. His theory, forgetting curve opened up a new way to study memory. His book on Human memory with his real-life experiments helped as an initial pathway to make memory study an important field of psychological experiments.
The speed, accuracy, firmness, and flexibility of each person's memory can vary according to the purpose, task, attitude, and method of Memory. The content of each person's memory varies according to his or her perspective, interest, and life experience.
So, what is the potential of human memory?
Modern Scientific Research has proved that human brain cells have a total of 13 billion and can hold the sum of 500 million books of information. Memory can last up to 70 to 80 years. But for a variety of reasons, this vast potential is stifled, with the average person using only 10% of their brain's memory. Unfortunately, until modern times, little was known about how to unlock the potential of memory. But it is obvious by now that by improving memory you can increase your conscious ability along with a lot of benefits that will help you lead a satisfactory life.
Our Understanding on Memory
To think of memory as a mere gift is actually a prejudice. Memory is the basis of human creativity, and its role is to learn the accumulation of things to avoid repeating the same thing. Memory is an important part of human intelligence structure and the foundation of imagination, creativity, and logical thinking ability. People must start to learn knowledge from memory.
We are surrounded by people who are observant and perceptive; people who are good at memorizing and reading; people who are good at logical thinking and intuitive thinking and people who are imaginative and creative. These are functions or extensions of memory. Memory can enrich people's knowledge so that they can reason and imagine. It goes without saying that memory is efficiency, and memory is a success.
Memory is the human brain's reflection of what has been experienced. It is divided into three parts, namely, to remember, to keep, to reproduce or to recognize. From the point of view of information processing, memory is the process of processing, encoding, storage, and extraction of input information.
A person's memory is usually measured from the memory speed, correct or not, the length of storage time can be successfully extracted from the four aspects. Some people never forget the same material, while others need to remember it over and over again. This is the agility of memory.
There is also a decline in memory in old age. Experts believe that these conditions are not caused by physical weakness or brain cell death, because people have one trillion brain cells and people lose no more than 10,000 brain cells a day. This is mainly due to the neglect of early cultivation and the lack of regular stimulation.
In order to realize the full potential of the gift of memory, physiologists point out that the early environment is crucial to the development and enhancement of human memory. As soon as a child is born, parents should induce and stimulate them to be curious about their surroundings and provide them with a variety of stimuli to encourage and stimulate their use of both parts of the brain. The left brain is used to remember things like language, lists, order, and so on. The right brain is used to think about things like rhythm, imagination, creation, and so on. Adults, on the other hand, should engage in as many activities of a different nature as possible in search of stimulation, which is the key to keeping the memory from declining.
The strength of memory is not innate and can be improved by training and mastering memory skills and methods. As long as you learn the right way to remember, you can improve your memory. Not far from now a professor did an experiment in which people were divided into two groups with similar memories, with the first group relying on a simple mnemonic task while the other group was trained in the Mnemonic method which people use for accelerated learning. Tests were conducted, and the second group has acquired better results than the first one. This proved that memory learning methods would increase memory power for real.
Types of Memory
From the perspective of the persistence of memory, memory is divided into short-term memory, which can only be maintained for a short time and long-term memory that can be maintained for a considerable period. For example, when we make a phone call, we remember the number from the phone book to dial, but after talking, we forget it all at once. In contrast, we all have some kind of moving experience or important information that we will never forget.
There are many types of memory we need to know about. Psychologist Squyres divided the memory into Declarative memory and procedural memory. The former is mainly divided into episodic memory related to experience or occurrence, whereas meaningful memory is related to knowledge and judgment. The latter is mainly memory related to body or skill. Cognitive skills, for example, are the ability to draw pictures in a certain order, while Classical conditioning is the ability to draw in a certain order.
Everyday, things change all the time, but we can't remember everything. However, if past events are accompanied by extremely intense emotional experiences, even a small amount of stimulation can revive memories, such as flash memory.
How We Perceive Information
Information from the outside world is received through the sense of the eyes or ears. However, in the case of visual information, when we see an object, the image reflected on the retina can only hold for a few hundred microseconds at most, and the auditory information can only hold for a few seconds at most. The information that gets our attention goes into short-term memory, but only for 15-30 seconds at most. It is because impressions do not last long memory needs to be trained. For example, in order to remember historical year numbers, we recite them over and over again, practicing rhymes, and so on, in order to successfully translate them into long term memory. Then, when we come across a situation where we need to remember these memories, we begin to retrieve and regenerate them.
But there is a limit to the range of memories that can be memorized instantaneously. In general, an adult's instantaneous memory range is about seven grams. The so-called Chucky is the smallest unit of memory but not the absolute number. For example, it takes 15 strong grams to write down the number 834279645963011 directly, but if you separate the number by every third digit to form 834, there are only five strong grams left, and if you can find another homophonic rhyme to remember, there's only one chunky. In other words, the capacity of a chunky can be increased to a considerable extent if you can shift your attention quickly within the grasp of an instant.
One or two more examples illustrate the importance of the intention of trying to remember. In class, even students who usually doze off in class or drift off will pay special attention if the teacher specifically suggests that something in the textbook is relevant to the test. Since the conscious mind that listens and looks carefully produces fairly effective attention, it is likely to produce good memory.
However, Practice makes a man perfect,
even if there is no intention to remember, but as long as you keep doing something, it will work just as well. The principle is the same as the intention to learn. What's more, the things that stand out or interest us will naturally remain in our memories, just by looking at the TV, the newspaper or the advertisements on the train.
Meaningful Memory
The content of memory, which we call as declarative memory, can be divided into episodic memory and meaningful memory. In fact, both of these memories are stored in the memory bank of knowledge. Episodic memory is a personal experience that cannot be shared with others, but meaningful memory is derived from episodic memory and developed into general and conceptual knowledge. For example, we all know that pine and Cherry trees are "trees." That's because episodic memories like "Cherry tree in my yard" or "Cherry tree on the dam" have been generalized, and the concept of "tree" has emerged as a result.
As for the information in meaningful memory, it is easier to assemble and store in mind than the information related to episodic memory. So even if you can't immediately answer the question "what did you eat at dinner a week ago? " (episodic memory), you can quickly answer the question "what was your typical food for dinner? " (meaningful memory).
Suppose we wanted to reorganize the following out-of-order sentences to make it a smooth article.
A. So he went to the supermarket.
B. The ingredients for hot pot are very rich.
C. Finally bought mutton, scallion, rice noodles and so on.
D. This evening, my long-lost nephew paid a rare visit.
E. Bought two bottles of wine on the way.
F. Thinks of making a hot pot for dinner.
It's easy for most of us to reassemble articles in the order of d-f-a-b-c-e because we already have the shopping process in mind. Conversely, if a part of the action is removed from the text and the subject is asked to recall it later, the subject will most likely add the removed part to complete the story. Therefore, the meaning of the article will not necessarily be written out, and sometimes we have to take a change in reading.
At this point, we process the information in our memory, reading the meaning of it so as to be consistent with our knowledge or plans. However, due to the possibility of misunderstanding or distorted memory of the situation, it is necessary to pay special attention.
We can learn a lot from these arguments or accounts. The first is that people use only a small fraction of their innate abilities. One theory is that humans only remember about 10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they heard, and 30 percent of what they saw. We live in a colorful, complex world with various stimuli for the senses to absorb so that we cannot see and hear. It distracts our attention and hinders the formation and stability of the dominant excitation centers in the Cerebral Cortex, and thus affects our clear and deep understanding of a particular thing.
Concentration and Attention for Memory Improvement
The concentration and stability of attention are the necessary conditions for the deep understanding of objective things and the improvement of learning efficiency.
Concentration at the movie or playing an arcade video game are all signs of concentration. Attention is the ability to purposefully focus mental activity on something for long periods of time. It is an important component of IQ. Successful people tend to have a lot of focus, a lot more hard work and a lot more commitment to their lives and careers.
Good attention is first shown in the scope of attention and by the number of objects that attention can clearly grasp at the same time. This is a process in which many problems can be noticed at the same time. When we watch a movie, for example, our attention is often drawn to many things and people, and constantly shifts from one thing to another, making it difficult to determine the extent of our attention.
In psychology, there are special instruments to determine the size of the attention span. The results show that adults generally notice four to six separate things at the same time. If things are not isolated from each other and have a certain relevance, the scope of attention will be expanded. Therefore, the best way to expand the scope of attention is to cultivate people's ability to grasp isolated things in a holistic way and to distribute their attention reasonably.
When students are in class, they take notes while listening. This is a way of allocating their attention. The distribution and concentration of attention are contradictory and unified. To concentrate, one mind cannot be used in two ways. But to distribute attention, one mind must be used in two ways (even three ways and four ways). But they can be unified under certain conditions. To maintain a uniform condition, it is necessary to master certain skills.
Furthermore, whether people are good at shifting their attention from what they don't need at the time to what they do need at the time reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the shift. For example, when a person is reading an interesting novel and needs to solve another important problem, he immediately puts aside the novel in which he is interested and thinks about a new problem. This is the expression of the attention initiative, on the other hand; if he is drawn to the novel and finds it hard to let it go, it shows a lack of initiative in his attention.
The initiative is an important index to measure attention ability, which is directly related to the level of memory. A person with a high level of attention, with a wide attention span and a long period of stability, has a particularly good memory and a correspondingly high IQ.
There are many ways to improve your memory. But it is absolutely necessary to focus on the object you want to remember before using these methods. Here's a quick quiz: Three passengers boarded at the beginning of the bus stop, two boarded at the next stop, one at the next stop, five at the next stop, three at the next stop. Many people expect to ask the last few passengers that are present. You listen in that point of view, and you count. But in the end, the question was, "how many stops did the bus make? " Since the subjects focused only on the number of passengers and not the number of stops, they listened but did not pay attention to what they were supposed to remember.
Attention
How do you focus your attention on the object you want to remember?
It's about being interested in the object of memory. For example, it is impossible for a new teacher to remember all the students 'names quickly. But for high-profile students, such as those who do exceptionally well, those who speak up in class, and those who are most undisciplined, teachers are quick to remember their names. On the contrary, for those students who are "unsuspicious" and who lack individuality, it is difficult for teachers to remember their names in a short period of time.
Why do some people become absent-minded when they read or study. The main reason is that the eyes are fixed on the book, but the mind is thinking about irrelevant things. Another external cause is that his environment distracts the person. The most fundamental way to overcome distractions and focus is to consciously think about your willpower and developing self-control. The more interesting and purposeful the content, the easier it is to concentrate. Therefore, when memorizing things, it might be good to make the meaning of things clear.
Here we introduce you to a kind of psychology in order to exercise the attention by a small game.
In a table with 25 squares, write the numbers 1 to 25 in random order. Then count from 1 to 25 as fast as you can. Point them out as you read and time them. You can create a few more of these yourself and do them once a day, and your concentration will improve dramatically.
When you're trying to make a decision on a test, a project, or a job, you're distracted by something outside of yourself, which means that you can't concentrate. A special study conducted by a memory training school in the United States offers a solution.
The process goes something like this:
The first stage: First, turn attention to pens, textbooks, toys, snacks, and other trivial things.
Second Stage: Stare at a target again and again until you're bored.
Thir
d Stage: Close Your Eyes and remember what you saw, such as a ballpoint pen. Draw the color, shape, length, and other features of the object you have seen in your mind.
Fourth Stage: Calm your mind in such a way that you are no more thinking of that object, and when you are sure, open your eyes.
Fifth Stage: 30 seconds apart if you are still not happy, choose something else and start again from phase one.
Once you develop a good habit of attention, you will get twice the result with half the effort in any activity. On the other hand, it is also necessary to consciously carry out training to regulate attention. For example, constantly reminding yourself to focus on something like keeping your eyes and ears open will try to form one exciting center in your brain.
How can we use attention to keep our memories alive for a long time?
For example, if we focus our attention on new information, that information will be stored in our short-term memory. If we have developed the habit of paying attention for a long time and continue to pay attention, then it will become a long-term memory.
Training Method
When driving on the highway, we will see along with the various road signs in mind. Take a break and remember what you saw on the signs such as while making refuel or while making a phone call. The next time we pass by, keep an eye on the gas station until we remember where we can get gas and make a phone call on the highway.