McPherson - Perfect Memory Training: All you need to get it right every time

Fiona McPherson

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Epub ISBN 9781409061069

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Published by Random House Books 2009
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Copyright Fiona McPherson 2009

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Perfect Memory Training

Dr Fiona McPherson has a PhD in psychology, and has spent many years researching how to improve human memory. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand, where she runs a small research company with her partner, and publishes an e-zine about memory.

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I started thinking about memory from a practical rather than academic standpoint when lack of sleep and complete distraction started attacking my ability to think and remember. Having just completed a doctorate in cognitive psychology (the branch of psychology devoted to memory and how we think), it was with considerable surprise that I realised I knew nothing that helped me improve a failing memory. So I began to look at some less academic books that claimed to help improve memory.

What really struck me was that most books spouted the same few bits of advice which went back decades to the early days of experimental psychology, and even further back to the days of ancient Greece. Good advice in its time, but cognitive psychology has come a long way since then. So I looked, and I found that, indeed, there was some very useful, practical advice that hadnt made it out into the world. One finding in particular really stayed with me: that most memory improvement programmes dont have any permanent effect.

Why not? Why do people who try to improve their memory fail to do so? Not because they are unintelligent or lazy, but because the memory improvement programmes are flawed. They are based on effective strategies and valid principles, but they dont work because they have put in the too-hard basket the information that you need to know to improve your memory. You need to understand the context of what youre learning so that you know how and why the memory-improvement strategies work. Research suggests that whether you habitually and appropriately use effective memory strategies and thats what permanent memory improvement is all about depends far more on how much you know about your own memory processes than on how smart you are.

The first half of this book aims to fill this gap, by explaining the principles of memory, and the second half puts this knowledge into practice by explaining some strategies to improve your memory.

One of the reasons behind the failure of most memory improvement programmes to achieve long-lasting improvement is that memory is really a category, like sport. Would you say, I want to improve my sport? Of course not. But you might say, I want to improve my tennis (or golf or swimming ).

Memory is not one thing. The feats of memory that so impress us are not evidence of a photographic memory or any other innate talent. Being able to memorise a string of 80 digits after seeing them once is a trick anyone can learn if they wish to devote months of training and practising to the skill.

But the trick does not generalise to other types of memory. The person who sweats for months to master longer and longer strings of digits will be no better at remembering shopping lists. Chess experts take years to develop their phenomenal memory for the arrangement of chess pieces, but that doesnt make them any better at remembering a speech or what they did last Tuesday.

Surveys have found that there are over 100 memory tasks in everyday life that can cause people problems. Each of these tasks requires a different strategy.

Dont panic! One hundred sounds a lot but think for a moment how many different techniques you have for simply getting through the day. Putting on your shoes is a different technique than putting on a shirt; making breakfast is an entirely different skill to cleaning your teeth. You probably use 100 different skills before youve gone out the door!

Moreover, youre not starting from scratch. You already know many memory skills, and youre probably quite happy with your level of competence at some of them. What it comes down to is identifying your needs. Dont say, I want to improve my memory; say, I want to improve these specific memory skills.