Graphic summaries are summaries that reorganize the text. Two examples of graphic summaries are outlines and graphic organizers.
In an outline, topics are listed with their subtopics in a linear format, like this:
Branches of Government (U.S.A.) |
|||
|
I. |
Executive Branch |
|
|
|
| |||
We forget someone’s name, and our response might be: “Oh I’ve always been terrible at remembering names!” Or: “I’m getting old; I really can’t remember things anymore.” Or: nothing — we shrug it off without thought. What our response might be depends on our age and our personality, but that response has nothing to do with the reason we forgot.
In 2002, a British study scanned the brains of ten "superior memorizers" — eight leading contenders in the World Memory Championships, and two individuals previously studied for their extraordinary memory accomplishments — all people that had demonstrated truly impressive feats of memory, in terms of the ability to quickly memorize hundreds of numbers or unrelated words. The ten "memory champions" were matched with ten controls, who had no memory capabilities out of the ordinary.
A lot of theories have been thrown up over the years as to what we need sleep for (to keep us wandering out of our caves and being eaten by sabertooth tigers, is one of the more entertaining possibilities), but noone has yet been able to point to a specific function of the sleep state that would explain why we have it and why we need so much of it.
In a 1987 experiment (1), readers were presented with a text that included one or other of these sentences:
or
Both texts went on to say:
The most obvious presumed benefit of homework is, of course, that it will improve students' understanding and retention of the material covered. However, partly because this (most measurable) benefit has not been consistently demonstrated, it has also been assumed that homework has less direct benefits:
A 5-year study1 involving 488 people age 75 to 85 found that, for the 101 people who developed dementia, the greater the number of stimulating activities (reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, playing board or card games, having group discussions, and playing music) they engaged in, the longer rapid memory loss was delayed. Similarly, a study2 involving 1321 randomly selected people aged 70 to 89, of whom 197 had mild cognitive impairment, has found that reading books, playing games, participating in compute
Because it holds some personal resonance for me, my recent round-up of genetic news called to mind food allergies. Now food allergies can be tricky beasts to diagnose, and the reason is, they’re interactive. Maybe you can eat a food one day and everything’s fine; another day, you break out in hives. This is not simply a matter of the amount you have eaten, the situation is more complex than that.
I talk a lot about how working memory constrains what we can process and remember, but there’s another side to this — long-term memory acts on working memory. That is, indeed, the best way of ‘improving’ your working memory — by organizing and strengthening your long-term memory codes in such a way that large networks of relevant material are readily accessible.
Oddly enough, one of the best ways of watching the effect of long-term memory on working memory is through perception.
Vascular dementia, as its name suggests, is caused by poor blood flow, produced by a single, localized stroke, or series of strokes.
It is the second most common dementia, accounting for perhaps 17% of dementias. It also co-occurs with Alzheimer's in 25-45% of cases. Although there are other types of dementia that also co-occur with Alzheimer's, mixed dementia generally refers to the co-occurrence of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.