15On the kanji for fortune telling, see James W. Heisig, Remembering the Kanji: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), 32.
16For the Yerkes–Dodson law, see Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson, “The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation,” Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 18 (1908): 459–482.
17For the claim that how someone responds to additional cognitive demands placed on a task depends on the task itself, the cognitive strategy used, and the level of mastery, see Janina A. Hoffmann, Bettina von Helversen, and Jörg Rieskamp, “Deliberation’s Blindsight: How Cognitive Load Can Improve Judgments,” Psychological Science 24 (6) (2013): 869–879.
18For the claim that even routine tasks can require extra mental processing, see Jean-François Bonnefon, Aidan Feeney, and Wim De Neys, “The Risk of Polite Misunderstandings,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20 (5) (2011): 321–324.
19For more on proactive interference, see Robert G. Crowder, Principles of Learning and Memory (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1976).
20For the details of this study on proactive interference, see Lisa Emery, Sandra Hale, and Joel Myerson, “Age Differences in Proactive Interference, Working Memory, and Abstract Reasoning,” Psychology and Aging 23 (3) (2008): 634–645.
8 … And Making Memories Work for You
1The TOT state is a “mild torment, something like the brink of a sneeze”: Roger Brown and David McNeill, “The ‘Tip of the Tongue’ Phenomenon,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5 (4) (1966): 325–337, at 326.
2For more on TOT states, see Donna J. Dahlgren, “Impact of Knowledge and Age on Tip-of-the-Tongue Rates,” Experimental Aging Research 24 (2) (1998): 139–153; Marilyn K. Heine, Beth A. Ober, and Gregory K. Shenaut, “Naturally Occurring and Experimentally Induced Tip-of-the-Tongue Experiences in Three Adult Age Groups,” Psychology and Aging 14 (3) (1999): 445–457.
3For more on TOT states and aging, see Timothy A. Salthouse and Arielle R. Mandell, “Do Age-Related Increases in Tip-of-the-Tongue Experiences Signify Episodic Memory Impairments?” Psychological Science 24 (12) (2013): 2489–2497.
4For the claim that novice chess players perform poorly on the task of recreating a position, see William G. Chase and Herbert A. Simon, “Perception in Chess,” Cognitive Psychology 4 (1) (1973): 55–81.
5For the claim that the vocabulary of the chess expert is between 50,000 and 100,000 patterns, see Herbert A. Simon and Kevin Gilmartin, “A Simulation of Memory for Chess Positions,” Cognitive Psychology 5 (1) (1973): 29–46. For the estimate of 10,000 hours of practice to acquire the vocabulary in chess and other disciplines, see K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review 100 (3) (1993): 363–406, and Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (London: Penguin UK, 2008). For the claim that the effects of practice vary widely by domain, see Brooke N. Macnamara, David Z. Hambrick, and Frederick L. Oswald, “Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Science 25 (8) (2014): 1608–1618.
6For Bahrick’s results on recall of classmates’ names, see Harry P. Bahrick, Phyllis O. Bahrick, and Roy P. Wittlinger, “Fifty Years of Memory for Names and Faces: A Cross-Sectional Approach,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104 (1) (1975): 54–75.
7For Bahrick’s experiment on memory for high school Spanish, see Bahrick, “Semantic Memory Content in Permastore.”
8For more on learning techniques, see John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham, “Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14 (1) (2013): 4–58.
9For the self-reference effect, see Timothy B. Rogers, Nicholas A. Kuiper, and William S. Kirker, “Self-Reference and the Encoding of Personal Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (9) (1977): 677–688.
10For the claim that the self-reference effect really is a self-reference effect, see Charles Lord, “Schemas and Images as Memory Aids: Two Modes of Processing Social Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (2) (1980): 257–269, and Lord, “Imagining Self and Others: Reply to Brown, Keenan, and Potts,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (3) (1987): 445–450.
11For the claim that the self is “a well-developed and often-used construct,” see Cynthia S. Symons and Blair T. Johnson, “The Self-Reference Effect in Memory: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 121 (3) (1997): 371–394, at 371. For the claim that people are more likely to remember the birthdays of others if those birthdays fall close to their own, see Selin Kesebir and Shigehiro Oishi, “A Spontaneous Self-Reference Effect in Memory: Why Some Birthdays Are Harder to Remember Than Others,” Psychological Science 21 (10) (2010): 1525–1531.
12For the claim that unpleasant memories weaken over time, see W. Richard Walker, John J. Skowronski, and Charles P. Thompson, “Life is Pleasant—And Memory Helps to Keep It That Way!” Review of General Psychology 7 (2) (2003): 203–210. For the Pollyanna principle, see Margaret Matlin and David Stang, The Pollyanna Principle: Selectivity in Language, Memory, and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1978).
13For more on encoding specificity, see Endel Tulving and Donald M. Thomson, “Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory,” Psychological Review 80 (5) (1973): 352–373.
14For a study that measures encoding specificity by manipulating external features, see Duncan R. Godden and Alan D. Baddeley, “Context-Dependent Memory in Two Natural Environments: On Land and Underwater,” British Journal of Psychology 66 (3) (1975): 325–331. For the claim that one’s affective state is also susceptible to encoding specificity, see John D. Teasdale and Sarah J. Fogarty, “Differential Effects of Induced Mood on Retrieval of Pleasant and Unpleasant Events from Episodic Memory,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88 (3) (1979): 248–257. For the claim that people do better recalling words after drinking if they’ve learned the words while drinking, see Herbert Weingartner, Wolansa Adefris, James E. Eich, and Dennis L. Murphy, “Encoding-Imagery Specificity in Alcohol State-Dependent Learning,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 2 (1) (1976): 83–87. For veterans of the Gulf War exhibiting more negative PTSD symptoms near the anniversary of the traumatic event, see Charles A. Morgan, Susan Hill, Patrick Fox, Peter Kingham, and Steven M. Southwick, “Anniversary Reactions in Gulf War Veterans: A Follow-up Inquiry 6 Years After the War,” American Journal of Psychiatry 156 (7) (1999): 1075–1079.
15For the claim that memory improves if the mood when the material was learned matches the mood when the material was recalled, see Paul H. Blaney, “Affect and Memory: A Review,” Psychological Bulletin 99 (2) (1986): 229–246.
16For the claim that stepping back from a task can lead to better problem solving and creativity, see, e.g., Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A. Finke, eds., The Creative Cognition Approach (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). For evidence that sleep and dreaming promote incubation effects, see, e.g., Deirdre Barrett, “‘The Committee of Sleep’: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving,” Dreaming 3 (2) (1993): 115–122.
17For more on scripts or schemata and semantic memory, see Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1977).
18For Bartlett’s research on semantic memory, see Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1995).
19For more on Cicero’s story of Simonides of Ceos, see E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Cicero: On the Orator, Books I–II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942).
&
nbsp; 20For more on mnemonic devices, see Douglas J. Herrmann, Michael M. Gruneberg, and Douglas Raybeck, Improving Memory and Study Skills: Advances in Theory and Practice (Toronto: Hogrefe & Huber, 2002).
21For the claim that rhymes are easier to remember than prose, see Michael W. Weiss, Sandra E. Trehub, and E. Glenn Schellenberg, “Something in the Way She Sings: Enhanced Memory for Vocal Melodies,” Psychological Science 23 (10) (2012): 1074–1078. On the method of loci being used to treat depression, see Tim Dalgleish, Lauren Navrady, Elinor Bird, Emma Hill, Barnaby D. Dunn, and Ann-Marie Golden, “Method-of-Loci as a Mnemonic Device to Facilitate Access to Self-Affirming Personal Memories for Individuals with Depression,” Clinical Psychological Science 1 (2) (2013): 156–162.
22For the claim that vivid mental images will only be useful in limited situations, see Russell N. Carney and Joel R. Levin, “Do Mnemonic Memories Fade as Time Goes By? Here’s Looking Anew!” Contemporary Educational Psychology 23 (3) (1998): 276–297; Margaret H. Thomas and Alvin Y. Wang, “Learning by the Keyword Mnemonic: Looking for Long-Term Benefits,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 2 (4) (1996): 330–342. For the idea that creating images and associations takes time away from other learning strategies, see Dunlosky et al., “Improving Students’ Learning; Herrmann et al., Improving Memory and Study Skills.
23On the importance of staying healthy for improving your memory, see Herrmann et al., Improving Memory and Study Skills.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Brown, Alan S. 2012. The Tip of the Tongue State. New York: Psychology Press.
If you’d like to know more about interference and tip-of-the tongue states, Brown’s book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of research on this topic.
Brown, Peter, Henry L. Roediger, and Mark A. McDaniel. 2014. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
This book provides more information about many of the memory phenomena and mnemonic devices that are mentioned in chapters 7 and 8.
Chabris, Christopher, and Daniel Simons. 2011. The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. New York: Crown.
Among other fascinating topics, Chabris and Simons take a critical look at the claims for “brain training” that we mention in chapter 5.
Herrmann, Douglas J., Michael M. Gruneberg, and Douglas Raybeck. 2002. Improving Memory and Study Skills: Advances in Theory and Practice. Toronto: Hogrefe & Huber.
This is a great book that takes a holistic approach to understanding and using mnemonic devices in order to improve study skills.
Leaver, Betty Lou, Madeline Ehrman, and Boris Shekhtman. 2005. Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
This very useful book addresses cognition and learning strategies, especially as they apply to the undergraduate student.
Marcus, Gary. 2012. Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age. London: Penguin Books.
There are important similarities between learning a foreign language in adulthood and learning to play a musical instrument. Marcus’s book is an account of his quest for proficiency at guitar playing.
Wyner, Gabriel. 2014. Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It. New York: Harmony Books.
There are many books that take more of a “how to” approach to learning a second language; Wyner’s book is a good place to start. His approach makes use of visual imagery and spaced practice to master vocabulary and grammar.
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Bialystok, Ellen, and Fergus I.M. Craik. 2010. Cognitive and linguistic processing in the bilingual mind. Current Directions in Psychological Science 19 (1): 19–23.
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Bialystok, Ellen, Fergus I.M. Craik, David W. Green, and Tamar H. Gollan. 2009. Bilingual minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 10 (3): 89–129.
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