Study Tip #4
BASIC MEMORIZING BY THINKING

Outline of basic ways to memorize

1. Link new ideas to both familiar and new ideas.
2. Ask yourself and answer, "Why does this make sense?"
3. Notice similarities and differences.
4. Notice when ideas are new.
5. Notice when new ideas are unexpected.
6. Notice when ideas reach your goals.
7. Memorize typical examples of concepts.
8. Make vivid mental images of concepts..
9. Think of details and fine points.
10. Think of concepts that are more general and more specific.
11. Think how ideas generalize to new examples.
12. Think how to use ideas to reach goals.
13. Think of your personal associations.

The basic idea of this study tip. 

When you notice how facts and ideas are related to each other, you build links among them and links build memory. The theme of the Study Tips on memory is that you need to make strong associations among chunks of information in order to learn them. If you have a memory problem, you may not be asso¬ciating ideas in strong ways to one another. We all forget ideas that stand alone. So think about the ways new inform¬a¬tion relates to other things that you know.

What do “linked with” and “related to” mean? There are far too many relationships to list them all, but here are some: similarity in some way; a kind of difference; novelty; words that can make a visual image; one idea that is a more general concept and the other that is a specific concept subsumed under the other; one idea that is an example of the other; one concept that is a cause of the other; one fact that is a detail of the other’s larger whole; and one event that occurred first and other second.

How do you make an association? When you take two facts or ideas and simply notice their relationship in a specific way, you have made an association.

The only shortcut you can use to speed up learning is to think in ways that associate ideas. No thinking, no linking! Don't try to use all of these suggestions at first. Pick one, practice it until you feel comfortable using it, and then try another and another.

1. Take new ideas and link them to both well-learned ideas and other new ideas. 

After you read or hear a new idea, search your memory for well-learned ideas that you naturally link it to. Don’t limit yourself to associating new ideas only to other new ideas described in a book or by a professor. Search your memory for your own knowledge of links to new information. Think of how the new and the familiar ideas are related. When you can use the familiar idea to predict the new one, you will have the most powerful way to remember.

Also link new ideas to other new ideas. When you read, you will notice many new bits of information. You can im-prove your memory by thinking how the new ideas are related to each other. Although associating new to new does not produce as strong memory as linking old to new, it is still a good method. You search for patterns among the new items.

2. Ask yourself and answer, "Why does this make sense?" 

Take a new fact and deliberately try to answer the question, "Why does this make sense?" Or ask, "Why is this idea true?" Search your mind for what you already know that is consistent with the idea that the new information is true. Research on memory shows that this one of the most powerful learning techniques there is.

For example, suppose you read in a social psychology text that when people feel uncertain about something, they are more likely to seek out others to affiliate with. Then ask yourself why it makes sense that uncertainty increases affiliation; you will find part of the answer in your own memories and part of it in the text. Or suppose you read in a math book that when you make a change on one side of an equation, you must make the same change on the other side. Ask yourself why it makes sense and you’ll be led to notice the importance of the equals sign linking the two sides and the need to keep them equal.

What about situations where you know that ideas are wrong. Suppose you are studying an older scientific theory that you know is false. Don't worry about it. Just pretend it might be true and ask, "Why does this theory make sense in terms of the time it was invented?" Then think of answers and they will build memory.

Don't ask yourself, "Why is this idea untrue?" And don't ask, "Why does this idea make no sense at all?" Research on learning shows that people forget ideas more when they search only for why ideas are nonsense. This does not mean that it's bad to do the different activity of evaluating ideas critically.

3. Notice similarities and differences. 

When you want to remember a new fact by searching your own knowledge, notice if it reminds you of anything similar. Your simple act of thinking of similar familiar knowledge will boost your memory for the new fact.
Example: My wife once noticed that the name of Faye, a waitress, was the same as one of my aunts. Months later, she saw the waitress, thought of my aunt, and recalled "Faye".

Also take a new idea and notice different related facts or ideas.. For example, learn what the color red is by comparing it to orange and magenta, or understand the concept of social norms better by taking a few seconds to notice how norms differ from values.

Another example: One of my sons said noticing similarities and differences was his main method of learning history. He read, for example, about a certain war and thought how it resembled a later war and differed from it. When studying the American Revolution, he compared it to the French Revolution. His memory grew naturally. Students who think about similarities and differences remember so much that they can often skip the step of memorizing things explicitly.
Tip: Choose two chunks of related information that could be confusing later and think in ways that make the two sets of information distinct.

4. Notice when ideas are new ones. 

As you read, think about whether facts are new to you or are already familiar. Research on memory shows that our minds are tuned to novelty; they give extra processing time and make more associations to new information over familiar information. Although in daily life our noticing of what is new comes easily, it is different when reading technical or difficult writing, so we need to look for what is new. Search on purpose for what is new about a book. Your noticing what is new improves your memory because it adds an emotional zing to the idea and it helps you classify it as important. Say to yourself, “That’s new!” (Of course, when you see familiar material, don't skip it; read it.)

5. Notice when ideas are unexpected. 

Many times information goes beyond being new; it will surprise you or go contrary to your beliefs. Notice it. Say to yourself, “That’s a surprise!” That will strengthen your memory for it.

6. Notice when ideas reach your learning goals. 

Turn your learning goal into a question. Ask questions. Look for answers. Then when you find one, notice consciously that it is the question’s answer. This noticing is important because it brings both question and answer into your mind nearly at the same time. By doing so, you make associations two ways: (1) You associate question to answer, and (2) you associate the feeling of being rewarded to the question-answer link and positively reinforce the memory. Say to yourself, "That's what I'm looking for!"

7. When learning definitions of new concepts, memorize typical examples, too. 

When you try to learn new words, you are used to learning the words themselves and their definitions. Add good typical examples and it will improve your memory.

Suppose you needed to memorize the definition of the biological term "mammal". "Mammals are warm-blooded animals that give birth to living young, feed them with milk, and are generally covered with fur or hair." Now as you memorize it, you might pick a cow as an example of a mammal.

8. When learning definitions of new concepts, make vivid mental images. 

Associate verbal information about a concept to visual images of examples of the concept. When you think of examples of concepts, use your mental ability to visualize, to see images of the examples. Although pausing in your reading to make mental images takes longer, it is so powerful that it is worth doing. Research shows our brains usually remember images better than words. Put in shape, size, color, and movement.
For example, students of nursing can read about a disease, shut their eyes and mentally see a friend sick, with the disease's symptoms, and lying in a hospital bed on white sheets. You can add auditory imagery (sounds, spoken words). Nursing students could imagine hearing their friend's voices naming the symptoms. Add kinesthetic imagery (feelings of touch, movements of your body). Nurses could imagine touching hot foreheads and feeling the heat of a fever.
You can use kinesthetic images for learning subjects that you might not think of. For example, an Electronics student studied circuit diagrams by pretending that he was an electron flowing through the wires and parts of the circuit. He imagined feeling the forces on him. A math student improved his understanding of graphs and charts by moving his hands up and down to match the line of the graph. And students of literature, psychology, sociology, and history often imagine feeling people's feelings.

9. Think of details and fine points. 

Study a concept very closely and notice its exact features and relate them to the whole thing. There is something very powerful about analyzing things into their parts and then noticing how the parts relate to one another and to the whole thing. Such associations are also powerful memory builders. For example, read an author's argument and sub-divide it into its parts. Read some history and break it into a series of events. Look a picture in a text and break it into parts.

10. Think of more general categories and more specific categories. 

As you read about concepts, link them to the larger categories they fit into. For example, when you read about apples, remind yourself they fit into the general concept of fruit. Things that apply to fruit in general also apply to apples. And as you read in sociology about folkways, rituals, and laws, make an effort to place them into the more general category of social norms.

You can also link concepts to more specific concepts. For example, three varieties of apples are MacIntosh, Red Delicious, and Gravenstein. By thinking "up" to general concepts and "down" to specific ones, your memory grows.

11. Think how ideas generalize to new examples. 

To generalize means to take a principle or example you already know and think of additional implications or examples that were not used as teaching examples. As you learn principles, first learn the principles and read a few examples. Next deliberately think of new examples not mentioned by the book. The benefit to making generalizations while you study reveals itself later when you might be tested on examples that you never studied but now can recognize because your mind has already played with a range of examples.

12. Think how to use ideas to reach goals.

Here's a powerful way of thinking because it uses desires and wants. As you learn:

(1) Think about things you want and how the new ideas could help you get what you want (goals first and new ideas second);
(2) Think how you can use this new information (information first and link to goals second). For example, a mechanics student read about motors and thought about types of auto trouble he could fix by using his knowledge.

13. Think of your personal associations. 

Most things we read about will bring personal memories to mind, even unusual memories of things we lived through. As you read, let yourself think about those personal things. Take time to notice and mull over personal associations. Practice thinking of the new idea and your personal association in order to strengthen the memory. Think how your new knowledge lets you see a past event in a new way.

Think of associations in ways that match the mental model of experts in the field being studied. 

Although any ways of making associations will help you learn, it is more useful to associate in ways used by the people in the field you are studying. One beneift: You will do better on tests because your instructors will use their mental models as a basis for choosing the wording of questions on exams. If you have built associations based on their mental models, then when you read their test questions your mind will immediately go to associations leading to useful answers.

For example, scientists think in terms of descriptions, measurement, cause and effect, and making arguments using evidence and reasoning to support scientific theories. You can use those patterns as a way to associate the parts of the new material together. Similarly, other fields have their favorite ways of thinking.

I’m not saying you have to think and memorize all the time in the way that your field of study does because we all use personal associations. But in tests we’d have to translate between the professor’s words and our personal associations to retrieve memories, and that process of translating takes extra time and, worse, might block us from recalling things we know.

(Dan Hodges. 7/07)

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