Articles

Does emotion help us remember? That's not an easy question to answer, which is unsurprising when you consider the complexities of emotion.

First of all, there are two, quite different, elements to this question. The first concerns the emotional content of the information you want to remember. The second concerns the effect of your emotional state on your learning and remembering.

The effect of emotional content

It does seem clear that, as a general rule, we remember emotionally charged events better than boring ones.

What is it?

Frontotemporal dementia is a disorder of the frontal lobes and includes what was known as primary progressive aphasia. Although it occurs far less often than Alzheimer's disease, among dementia sufferers younger than 65 it is estimated to occur at about the same rate. In other words, frontotemporal dementia is, unlike the most common dementias, not a disorder of age. Most sufferers become symptomatic in their 50s and 60s.

What mnemonics are, and what they are for

Aids to memory such as acronyms, rhymes, linking information by creating visual images or making up a story, are called mnemonics. Mnemonic strategies have been recommended as appropriate for remembering the following types of information:

I don't often talk about eyewitness testimony, but it's not because of the lack of research. It's a big field, with a lot of research done. When  I say I don't follow it because I regard the main finding as a done deal - eyewitness testimony is useless - that's not meant to denigrate the work being done. There is, clearly, a great deal of value in working out the exact parameters of human failures, and in working out how we can improve eyewitness testimony. I just arbitrarily decided to ignore this area of research until they'd sorted it all out!

The method of loci or place method

This is the classic mnemonic strategy, dating back to the ancient Greeks, and is (as evident from its continued use over 2500 years) an extremely effective strategy for remembering lists.

Research has found that people are most likely to successfully apply appropriate learning and remembering strategies when they have also been taught general information about how the mind works.

The more you understand about how memory works, the more likely you are to benefit from instruction in particular memory skills.

When you have a good general understanding of how memory works, different learning strategies make much more sense.

Michael Gove is reported as saying that ‘Learning facts by rote should be a central part of the school experience’, a philosophy which apparently underpins his shakeup of school exams. Arguing that "memorisation is a necessary precondition of understanding", he believes that exams that require students to memorize quantities of material ‘promote motivation, solidify knowledge, and guarantee standards’.

This is the last part in my series on understanding scientific text. In this part, as promised, I am going to talk about the difficulties novices have with scientific texts; what they or their teachers can do about it; and the problems with introductory textbooks.

Alzheimer's disease currently affects one in 10 people over age 65 and nearly half of those over age 85.

More than 19 million Americans say they have a family member with the disease, and 37 million say they know somebody affected with Alzheimer's.

In the United States, the average lifetime cost per Alzheimer patient is US$174,000. (These figures are from the U.S. Alzheimer's Association).

Transfer refers to the ability to extend (transfer) learning from one situation to another. For example, knowing how to play the piano doesn’t (I assume) help you play the tuba, but presumably is a great help if you decide to take up the harpsichord or organ. Similarly, I’ve found my knowledge of Latin and French a great help in learning Spanish, but no help at all in learning Japanese.