Published on Psychology Today
One of my favorite activities to do with students when I’m teaching them about memory is to ask them to tell me about a penny. Seems easy right? Try it! Here’s what I want to know:
1. Who is on the front of the penny?
2. Which direction is that person facing? Left or right?
3. Is there something written above his head? What is it?
4. Is there something written below his head? What is it?
5. Is there something written to his right? What?
6. Is there something written to his left? What?
At first blush, most students think this is going to be an easy task. I did too the first time I tried it myself. Once you try, you realize it’s not as easy as you thought. In fact, performance is typically abysmal. But the big question is why? Why is memory so bad for something we’ve all seen a million times?
Unfortunately, as much as we’d like them to be, memories aren’t like photographs that we file away in our brains. According to memory expert and author of Why We Remember, Dr. Charan Ranganath, memories are more like paintings, where some aspects of the memory are like a photograph, but other parts are fuzzier, more akin to a painting—colored by our beliefs, desires, and interpretations. Lucky for us, Ranganath and other researchers who have studied memory for decades have some solid, evidence-based recommendations for how to improve your memory.
Attention and Intention
In the case of a penny, part of the reason we can’t remember its details is that we’re not exactly paying attention to them. Ranganath points out that our brains are not designed to remember everything, and that attention and intention are necessary for accurate recall. In other words, attention focuses us on one thing, and then once we are focused, we need to be mindful if we want to remember it. No one has ever asked us to memorize a penny before, so even though we’ve seen a penny thousands of times, we’ve never focused hard enough and intentionally enough to remember its details. Try the same quiz with a quarter, nickel or dime; I bet you’ll fail just as badly. My students sure do. But now that you’ve paid attention and had to intentionally answer these questions, you may do better if you retake the quiz tomorrow.
Context is Everything
Have you ever walked into a room and forgot what you walked in there for? Yeah, me too. It happens because most memories are encoded along with context, or where you learned something. In this example, let’s say you’re in the living room, and you thought about something you needed. Then you walked into the kitchen to get it, effectively changing the context where you thought about it in the first place. If you walked back into the living room, you’re bringing yourself back to the context where you first thought of that thing that you needed and will likely remember it again.
This can be really useful to know if you’re trying to learn something new. There are classic studies in social psychology showing that if you study in a certain room, you’ll do better at remembering the material if you’re asked to recall it in the very same room. So let’s say you’re learning about something in a class or seminar; you’re going to do better on the exam if you’re in the same room where you first learned the material. This is because context (e.g., that classroom) is part of your memory of the material (Liu et al., 2021). However, what if your final exam is administered in a different room? Now you might be in trouble. The solution according to science is to take breaks between studying and move your study location around a bit. If you study in a different place over and over again, the brain will be less and less able to tie those memories to the context, till eventually you can remember it context free. So mix it up, go to a coffee shop one day, a library another day, and then maybe your living room. By separating learning from context, you’ll be better able to recall those memories anywhere.
Not All Memories are Created Equal
If you think back to your earliest memories, what comes to mind? For me it was a birthday party, the first time my parents bought my baby brother home from the hospital, and opening gifts on Christmas morning. What a lot of these moments have in common is that they each elicited a strong emotional response. Emotions can make things easier to remember. In particular, research suggests that events that elicit some form of surprise can be especially memorable. Scientists hypothesize that this is likely because our brains are set up to make predictions about the world around us so that we can anticipate any threats that might pop up around the corner. As a result, things that are surprising get more of our attention than other events, and as a result, are easier to remember (Antony et al., 2021). The same could be true for events that are paired with other similar emotions, like fear or excitement. This makes practical sense: It’s easier to remember events that spark wonder, excitement, and curiosity than events that are expected and boring. So trying to inject a little bit of emotion into learning will likely help you remember better, for better or for worse.
Get Some Rest
If you want to maintain a good memory, you have to get a good night sleep. In fact, research has shown that slow wave sleep is incredibly important for helping us to consolidate, or store our memories, which is course vital for learning. As I mentioned in my post from last month, research has shown that sleep has benefits for overall speed and accuracy of performance on various tasks, and on learning and memory (Souabni et al., 2022). So make sure you are getting a good night sleep, and perhaps even schedule any kind of learning or studying you need to do so that you have time to get a little shuteye afterwards.
Sharing is Caring
I wish our brains stored memories like data files that we can access at any time, but as you’ve learned here, that isn’t our reality. It takes effort to remember things, and that effort will vary based on how exciting or boring an event is, and where and when you first experienced it. But it also means that memories aren’t static—instead, they change over time with telling and retelling of our favorite stories. If you want to have a more colorful memory of a happy event, retell it with others that share the memory with you. Their telling of the same story can add details and highlights to your favorite memories just from hearing other perspectives of the same event. So this holiday season, if you want to make long-lasting memories, be intentional about it, get some rest, and try to fill those memories with as much joy as possible. On top of that, don’t be afraid to reminisce about past memories—talking about them and filling them with joy can help them stay alive for years to come.
Here are the answers to our quiz. How did you do?
1. Who is on the front of the penny? Abraham Lincoln
2. Which direction is that person facing? Left or right? To the right
3. Is there something written above his head? What is it? “In God We Trust”
4. Is there something written below his head? What is it? No
5. Is there something written to his right? What? The year
6. Is there something written to his left? What? “Liberty”
Photo by Antoni Shkraba/Pexels
References
Antony, J. W., Hartshorne, T. H., Pomeroy, K., Gureckis, T. M., Hasson, U., McDougle, S. D., & Norman, K. A. (2021). Behavioral, physiological, and neural signatures of surprise during naturalistic sports viewing. Neuron, 109(2), 377-390.
Liu, X. L., O'Reilly, R. C., & Ranganath, C. (2021). Effects of retrieval practice on tested and untested information: Cortico-hippocampal interactions and error-driven learning. Psychology of learning and motivation, 75, 125-155.
Ranganath, C. (2024). Why we remember. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Souabni, M., Souabni, M. J., Hammouda, O., Romdhani, M., Trabelsi, K., Ammar, A., & Driss, T. (2022). Benefits and risks of napping in older adults: A systematic review. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 14, 1000707.
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