Continued: Remembering & Forgetting
who reported students remembered best if they were
tested repeatedly.
Not high stakes testing, but
repetition of the information. Quizzing yourself would
work. My dad could remember quite a bit about
chemistry a subject he loved and one he had been
tested on throughout his studies and then in the field.
Current research adds some useful information
to the concept of repetition. It demonstrates that it is
best to pause between
those tests or repetitions.
Our brains need time to
consolidate information in
order to build strong
networks of neurons.
Everyone
has
experienced that aha
moment when you have
taken a break from a
difficult task and suddenly
the answer is upon you.
That is a reason sleep is
so important, it is during
deep sleep that your
brain consolidates
previous information. If
stimulus events do not
get put into networks they
fade and eventually are
forgotten.
Even
information you work hard
to remember can fade
over time. That is why
my former students have
difficulty remembering my
class, they did not keep
firing the networks I tried to
help them develop.
Nothing works to build strong memories if you
do not pay attention. You have to attend to the
information you are trying to learn.
There are a
number of ways to enhance attention through the use
of media, peer teaching and hands on learning. The
value of those methodologies can be negated,
however, if the student has a mindset that puts them
in opposition to learning or attention can be
diminished by multitasking. Using electronics, passing
notes, day dreaming and an over stimulative
environment can keep information from ever reaching
the hippocampus. You might think you can do more
than one thing at a time, but it is unusual to do all of
these things well. It is better to complete one task
before tackling another if you want to be able to
remember what you have done.
Even if you are healthy there are many
impediments of strong
recall.
Evolutionary
biologist, Robert Trivers
from Rutgers University
believes that self
deception,
an
evolutionary adaptation,
distorts what we
remember.
“Our sensory systems are
organized to give us a
detailed and accurate
view of reality,” he says,
“but once this information
arrives in our brains, it is
often distorted and biased
to our conscious minds.”
We repress painful
memories, create false
ones, rationalize immoral
behavior and jack up our
self-esteem. We deny
ourselves the truth.”
We are influenced by, as
R o b e r t S a p o l s k y,
evolutionary biologist from
Stanford, posits, a range of nature nurture events
shaping who we are and contributing to our mindset
beginning with evolutionary impacts from prehistory
right up to what we are doing when the stimulus is
introduced into our sensory system.
What we
remember is truly a matter of our genetic makeup, the
environment in which we have been raised, and our
surroundings at the moment of input.
Since there is no way that the brain can pay
conscious attention to all sensory data that constantly
[14]