Study Skills which Improve Memory

Chunking, Elaboration and Rehearsal are certain memory exercise that help with the retention and recall, when large amount of study materials needs to be remembered.

1. Chunking: Chunks are units of memory. The process of chunking is used for storing the information in Short-Term Memory (STM) (second stage of memory). Chunking is based on the principle that STM can hold five-to-nine bits of information only.

• Huge information string is divided into several pieces which are easy to remember (five-nine bits).
• Regrouping meaningful information together in chunks facilitates easy access to information.

The big paragraphs of study can be converted into small points to remember, which indicates the elaborative material.

2. Rehearsal: Rehearsal refers to mental repetition of information for retention in STM. It is human preference to transform information into sounds, or acoustic codes. Thus, we readily rehearse by mentally talking to ourselves. Rehearsing aloud is a very efficient method to retain information in STM. It is also an effective method to transfer the information from STM to Long-term Memory (LTM) (third stage of memory which has unlimited storage capacity).

3. Elaboration: It is a process of creating associations between a new memory and existing ones. E.g. if you read a paragraph in a textbook and spend a few minutes relating its content to what you had learned in the previous chapters or to your own life, you will be elaborating.