How to quickly remember the necessary information

At the end of the XIX century, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus built a forgetting curve that shows how long information is stored in memory.

Ebbinghaus asked subjects to memorize meaningless three-letter syllables. In mechanical memory, that is, when a person does not understand the meaning of the material and does not use mnemotechnics, after an hour only 44% of the information remains in memory, and after a week - less than 25%. Fortunately, with conscious memory, information is forgotten much more slowly.

Most of the information is forgotten in the first hours after learning. What do we do about it?







Further experiments showed that when you repeat the memorized material, the rate of forgetting decreases. The more repetitions, the stronger the information is remembered.

Practical conclusions can be drawn from experiments to determine the rate of forgetting. One is that the practice of learning something at once is ineffective. It is better to remember voluminous information in several approaches, allocating time for repetition.

If you have one day to memorize, the optimal mode of repetition will be the following:

the first - 15-20 minutes after learning;
the second - in 6-8 hours;
Three in 24 hours.

It is better to repeat information actively: not to read or listen a second time, but to try to extract from memory and peek at the source. If you are lucky enough to spend more time remembering information, repeat it as follows:

The first time is on the day of learning.
the second on the fourth day;
The third is on the seventh day.

If the amount of information is large, it is better to repeat it with varying degrees of detail. The first time – in full, the second – the key points, the third – the entire amount of information in another grouping or in another order. The more thoroughly you process it, the more you will remember.

Three repetitions are the minimum required. When an illegal scout learns a legend, he repeats it hundreds of times and returns to it regularly. Because his life depends on it.

The edge effect

This pattern of memory occupies a special place in intelligence. To test it, do a little experiment. Quickly, without preparation, read:
fireworks; function; orange; doctor; car; magazine; clock; editorial office; sofa; skyscraper; panel; meteorite.

Close the list and try to remember the words from it. Test yourself. Most likely, among the words you remember will fall "fireworks" and "meteorite".

Words in the middle of the list will be more difficult to remember and with errors. It is best to remember the beginning and the end. The edge effect doesn't just work on lists. When you try to remember the events of the past day, morning and evening are the clearest.

In the exam, students dream of getting their first ticket. When memorizing a legend, its chronological middle is most difficult.

As already mentioned, the edge effect is actively used in exploration. With it, you can mask your interest in a topic. Don’t talk about what really interests you at the beginning and end of the conversation. Start with an abstract topic. In the middle, report or ask what you need. At the end of the conversation, talk about something else.

The edge effect doesn't always work. If you touch on a topic that is extremely painful for a person, he will remember it anyway, even if you raise it in the middle of the conversation.

Well, that is the art of a scout to know the sick places of people and bypass them. Ask the question differently. For example, give the impression of a near, tactful person who mentioned an uncomfortable topic due to ignorance or inconsideration. In this case, the interlocutor will remember your clumsy tactlessness, which will push the essence of the question you asked to the background.

Interference

The essence of interference is that similar memories are mixed. Two similar memories seem to influence each other, and the more similar they are, the more difficult it is to reliably remember them. At the same time, not only does new information make it difficult to remember the old, but, conversely, the old often prevents the reproduction of the new.

For example, you have been using a credit card for several years and remember its pin. When the card expires, the bank reissues it. At first, every time you access an ATM, an old pin will automatically pop up in your memory, and it will take a conscious effort to remember a new one. But after a while, the habit will change: the new pin code will be recalled automatically, and the old one with effort. Similar memories associated with the same situation interfere with each other.

To reduce the negative impact of interference, it is possible to distinguish the memory of similar information over time. For example, when preparing for the exam, try to memorize the material in such a way that as different questions as possible follow each other.

If you need to read a large number of documents, let each next one be as different as possible. This rule is true in many cases: change of activity saves strength. If during the day you need to edit a document, write a review and draw a diagram, then text work, editing and reviewing are better separated from each other by drawing.

On the contrary, if you want your interlocutor to forget something, overload him with a lot of information on a similar topic. Ask him for his opinion, discuss the details in detail, let him be imbued with what he said. As a result of such a trick, the interlocutor’s memory will become confused, and due to interference, he will not be able to clearly remember what he, in your opinion, should forget. At a minimum, your interlocutor will start to get confused and lose confidence.

When someone tries to remember something in a conversation with you, and you want to prevent it, start... prompt. Unbelievers, but close to the truth clues will interfere with the memory - will create the same interference. This technique is used by lawyers, confusing witnesses during court hearings.

In everyday life, you can observe a similar phenomenon when friends or loved ones try to help you remember something, but their tips only complicate matters.



P.S. And remember, just by changing our consumption – together we change the world!

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Source: facebook.com/mihail.litvak.37/posts/ 1004285272999768