Memory Essay

Memory improvement.Our memories are a very special and unique way in which our brain stores information. To be able to store information we firstly need to know ways in which we organise our thoughts in different ways, and consider how organisation of thought can lead to improved memory. Organising our thoughts involves the use of mental images, concepts and schemas. In this essay I will be identifying ways of using mental images, concepts and schemas to improve our memory. A mental image also known as (iconic thought) in psychology terms is a picture we produce in our brain that translates what we are thinking from a word to an image. When we are learning or thinking we do so in word form, however numerous experiments have been carried out to support the fact that when we are to remember verbal or written information we can recall it better if we use mental images of the information we receive, as the mental image will give us another cue when we come to recall the information. Micheal Raugh and   Richard Atkinson(1975) carried out experiments to support this by developing a key word technique. They asked two groups of participants to learn a list of sixty Spanish words by using a key word technique, this technique is used by taking a word like 'poubelle' which is pronounced as (pooh- bell) and is translated as 'bin' in English. Half of the participants using the key words were asked to think of an English word that sounds like the French   word or part of the word. Then you make a mental picture of the key word in English. So with the word 'poubelle' you could picture yourself lifting a lid off a 'bin' that was shaped like a 'bell' and it smells like 'poo'. By using this technique the participants scored eighty eight percent, compared to the other half of participants who did not use the key word technique. Another way of organising our thoughts is by using concepts, concepts are a way we receive information and put the information we receive in to categories of...