Memory and Strategies for Memory Retention in Psychology

This article discusses the processes of memory encoding, storage, and retrieval. It also explores the reasons why we forget and strategies for memory retention. The strategies include focusing attention, avoiding cramming, organizing and structuring information, elaborating and rehearsing, visualizing concepts, and paying attention to extra difficult information.

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Memory is the term that is usually given to processes and structures involved in storage and
retrieval of information in a human brain. It is fundamental to our lives. The information that
is stored in memory are in forms of sounds, images or meanings.
There are three processes that require memory remembrance
1. Encoding memory
From the sensory place, information is taken out and into our system of memory and it needs
to be changed into a form that the human brain system can cope up with. It is similar to
changing of different currencies from your current form when you travel from one country to
another. Changing of information or memory encoding can be either Visual, Acoustic and
semantic that is the change of meaning (Milner, & Klein,2015). Encoding involves short and
long memory. The principle of encoding in long term memory is usually semantic which
involves the change of meaning while short term memory is usually associated with visual
and sound effects.
2. Memory storage
This is the second process in memory remembrance. It concerns the nature of memory where
the information is stored. The memory storage involves where information is stored, the
duration the memory lasts or how long, how much information can be stored at a particular
time and what kind of information is stored in the memory. This is one of the primary reasons
why we forget. The last reason why we forget is motivated forgetting which is induced by a
professional to help in memory loss.. Long term memory has an unlimited capacity and
information can store a lot more information than the short term memory (Haller, &
Barkhof,2018). This is because of the limited capacity involved in short term memory.

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3. Memory retrieval
It means literally getting the information stored in the storage out. It involves remembering
what is stored in the memory. If we cannot remember something it is really hard to retrieve it.
The difference in retrieving memory is the short term and long term of it. The difference in
retrieving memory from short term memory and long term memory is that in short term it is
retrieved sequentially. It means that remembering is done in sequence (Lee, & Adams,2017).
In long term however, retrieval is done in by association while organizing information greatly
helps in information retrieval.
Why do we forget?
There are various reasons why we forget, the main reason is however, retrieval failure. Our
memory simply becomes unable to retrieve any stored memory. Others include interference
of the stored information by other information therefore making it hard for it to be stored
(Tai, K. S., & Manning,2015). The third factor is failure to store. Storage is important if
information is to be stored at any particular time. Failure to store simply means that there will
be no information in the memory. This is one of the primary reasons why we forget. The last
reason why we forget is motivated forgetting which is induced by a professional to help in
memory loss. This is usually conducted after a bad experience by somebody and the need to
suppress or repress the information stored. These are the two types of induced memory
erasing mechanisms that are known.
Strategies on memory retention
There are various strategies of memory retention and it is used especially by students or
medical doctors or any other profession that requires high memory retention capacity

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(Sainath, & Sak, H.2015,). The following are some of the strategies involved in memory
retention, they include;
1. Focus your attention
Many people always loses attention whenever necessary. For retention of memory, one needs
to actively focus the attention on the information so that it may be transferred from short term
memory to long term memory.
2. Avoid cramming
Marathon session in trying to remember only leads to loss of memory upon reading. Studying
over a period of time is the right strategy to retain the information.
3. Organize and structure information
Information should be well organized and structured in-order to be retained easily. It is
important to keep information structured in order to store easily (Sak,& Beaufays,. 2014).
4. Elaborate and rehearse
This is going through the information over and over again in order to grasp it in full.
Elaboration means explaining information deeply.
5. Visualizing concepts
Visualization means seeing things with the inner eye. It makes people grasp more. Relating
new information to things that you already know is also very important as a memory
retention strategy.

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6. Paying attention to extra difficult information
Information that is a little hard to grasp should be given extra attention.

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References
Milner, B., & Klein, D. (2015). Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions:
memory and memories—looking back and looking forward. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry,
jnnp-2015.
Haller, S., & Barkhof, F. (2018). Peri-hippocampal developmental venous anomalies and
memory loss: more than a normal variant?. Neuroradiology, 1-4.
Lee, S. S., Ding, Y., Karapetians, N., Rivera-Perez, C., Noriega, F. G., & Adams, M. E.
(2017). Hormonal Signaling Cascade during an Early-Adult Critical Period Required for
Courtship Memory Retention in Drosophila. Current Biology, 27(18), 2798-2809.
Tai, K. S., Socher, R., & Manning, C. D. (2015). Improved semantic representations from
tree-structured long short-term memory networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.00075.
.

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