As we all know, rhyme and rhythm help make information more memorable. Here's a few ideas that may help you use them more effectively.
Rhythm and rhyme are of course quite separate things, and are processed in different regions of the brain. However, they do share some commonalities in why and how they benefit memory. Rhyme and rhythm impose pattern. For that reason, rhyme and rhythm are particularly valuable when information is not inherently meaningful.
Consider our facts about blood:
We could, as is often advised, simply turn these into why questions. And we can answer these on the basis of the connections we’ve already made:
Because they need to accommodate changes in pressure
Because they need to accommodate high pressure
Let me start by saying that if you're healthy and are eating a good balanced diet, there should be no need for you to take supplements. I also want to emphasize that the best way of meeting your body's needs for certain vitamins and minerals is to get them from food. In some cases, for one reason or another, this may not be possible. For example, as a (mostly) vegan, I take iron and B12 supplements, to make up for these deficiencies in my diet. Elderly adults with small appetites may also find it hard to get all the nutrients they need from their diet.
I recently reported on a finding that memories are stronger when the pattern of brain activity is more closely matched on each repetition, a finding that might appear to challenge the long-standing belief that it’s better to learn in different contexts. Because these two theories are very important for effective learning and remembering, I want to talk more about this question of encoding variability, and how both theories can be true.
We must believe that groups produce better results than individuals — why else do we have so many “teams” in the workplace, and so many meetings. But many of us also, of course, hold the opposite belief: that most meetings are a waste of time; that teams might be better for some tasks (and for other people!), but not for all tasks. So what do we know about the circumstances that make groups better value?
While parents and teachers have always strongly supported small class sizes, their belief has not always been supported by evidence. Part of the problem lies in that word “small” — what constitutes a small class? Different interventions have looked at reducing class sizes from 40 to 30, or 30 to 25. It may well be that such reductions are not sufficient to show clear benefits.
Find out about the pegword mnemonic
Here are pegwords I've thought up in the Spanish language.
As with the original example, let's try it out with our cranial nerves.
En español, los nervios craneales son:
Flashcards are cards with a word (or phrase) on one side and its translation on the other. You can buy ready-made flashcards, and these can certainly be helpful, particularly if you're inexperienced at learning another language. However, it is more effective if you make them yourself. Not only will the cards be customized to your own use, but the activity of selecting words and writing them down help you learn them.
I’ve always been interested in the body’s clocks — and one of the most interesting things is that it is clocks, in the plural. It appears the main clock is located in a part of the brain structure called the hypothalamus (a very important structure in the brain, although not one of much importance to learning and memory). The part of the hypothalamus that regulates time is called the suprachiasmatic nuclei. These cells contain genes that switch on, off, and on again over a 24-hour period, and send electrical pulses and hormones through the body. This is the body’s master clock.