Remember to Repeat

Wouldn't it be a delight if our brains worked like a cassette tape recorder?  Do you remember those handy gadgets.  All you needed to do was put a blank cassette into the machine, press record and talk or sing into the microphone.  Then rewind and press play, and you heard a recording of what you had done.  While it might seem that it would be great to have it work that easily, our brains are, in fact, capable of so much more than the old cassette recorder.  The key is knowing how to maximize its potential.

That's what I'm hoping to share in this series of blog posts as I read John Medina's book, Brain Rules.  I can't say that I agree with his whole perspective - he works from an evolution-focused foundation - but many of his insights have been extremely enlightening.

We last talked about short-term memory and the fact that repeating information at regular intervals would enhance the encoding of that information.  Likewise, receiving that information in a variety of ways - through multiple senses - would provide more intricate and lasting encoding.  The key phrase for short-term memory was Repeat to Remember.

Next we will look at long-term memory, for which the key phrase is Remember to Repeat.

New memory traces - often referred to as working memory - are flexible, subject to amendment, and at great risk for extinction.  Converting this working memory into long-term storage is called consolidation.  Just like short-term memory, the fixative for long-term memory is repetition at regular intervals.  Thinking or talking about an event immediately after it happens greatly enhances memory.  Putting thoughts into your own words is another beneficial action.  Both are incorporated in the educational exercise of narration, where the student may read or listen to a passage or chapter in a book, and is then asked to recount the information in their own words.  Doing so right after the initial exposure is effective, and then repeating the information again - telling Dad at dinner, or sharing it with someone later in the day - will further fix the information in place.

There are auditory and visual components to memory, but when both can be incorporated as the information is first processed, the memory traces are more intricate and more easily retrieved at a later time.  The brain's retrieval systems seem to undergo a gradual shift from specific and detailed reproductions of information to more general and abstracted recall.  Regular re-exposure to the information will help to keep the memories more detailed.

Harvard phychology professor, Dan Schacter, tells his students, "If you have only one week to study for a final and only ten times when you can hit the subject, it is better to space out the ten repetitions during the week than squeeze them all together."  Late night, last minute cramming sessions are not effective.  Rather we learn here that it is better to revisit the information regularly between the time it is introduced and the time that retrieval is needed (test day) in order to ensure that retrieval will be as vivid as possible.

As teachers, we can seek to pace the information that we are giving to our students so that we are incorporating new information gradually and repeating it at timed intervals, rather than bombarding our students' brains with a constant flow of new information and minimal opportunities to revisit and explore deeper the concepts that were recently introduced.

For enhanced memory function ... Repeat to Remember, and Remember to Repeat.

Kelly