Association: pillar of good memory

Nutrition Health Review, Wntr, 1989

Association: Pillar of Good Memory

The powers of association can usually determine how effectively memory will function. Has someone's name escaped you? Try going through the alphabet and the likelihood is that you will come upon a letter that triggers the elusive name.

Any number of lapses of memory can be jogged by thinking of an association. The title of a book forgotten? Try to visualize the book, cover and all, where and when you bought it. Again, the probability of recall is great.

The more associations we make in dealing with material we hope to remember, the easier the recall. The only other interferences are drug overdoses, intoxication, and shock therapy.

If it were not for the cues provided by association, we would have difficulty recollecting anything. Memory would be like a vast library without an index catalogue. Any one item of association may have thousands of references.

When we try to remember some new information, it is usually more effective when we repeat it. The process at work seems to be not the repetition itself that is helpful to memorizing but through repetition the mind constructs patterns, imposing its own structure and organization on the material.

Repetition also gives the mind an opportunity to make associative links. All such memory training is enhanced by taking regular breaks during study or mental labor.

Researchers are convinced that human memory is a vast, intricate and interconnected network. It is not numbers, words, or syllables that are recorded but concepts and propositions -- the forming of new links in the network, the making of new associations.