Short-term memory: what is it and how to improve it?

Poets devote poems to memory - the basis of human consciousness. Without it, people will not be able to live and will simply turn into some kind of creatures who will not have intelligence. Anyone who has a good memory will never be lost in life. He will always find a good job and be able to move up the career ladder with ease. If a person has excellently developed perception, then it is easier for him to transfer the necessary information for long-term storage in his brain.

Let's understand what short-term memory is and why it needs to be improved.

Need to know what exists short-term and long-term memory. Both concepts are very important for the intellectual level. In psychology, it is customary to use a short term memory designation - KVP. It represents a certain component of human memory, information for which is transmitted from tactile perception only when the awareness of tactile actions passes. It is also triggered from long-term memory with the assistance of the necessary elements of non-special memories. This combination allows you to save small information that is immediately used by a person. Therefore, such memory is also called primary or active.

Let's see how short-term memory works.

It is generally accepted that the capacity of the KVP is only 4-5 objects. When intelligence is involved in the process, the information content becomes more significant. For example, natural landscapes or paintings (photographs), mental models (various tables) can become objects of human memory in this case.

If such data is located in short-term memory, then it becomes distinct to one degree or another and has different sizes. It all depends on how developed this memory is.

Short-term (mechanical) memory is developed in different ways in different people. It can work without a thinking process. If the amount of memory is limited, then a natural process of replacement occurs: when a person receives new information, the old is immediately erased in his brain.

KVP is a kind of information orderly. Information is processed, and then unnecessary is eliminated. "Overflow" of memory as a whole is not automatically allowed, long-term memory does not suffer. It turns out that without KVP long-term will not be able to work reliably. Only that information that was initially processed by the brain in short-term memory gets into the long-term one.

For your short-term memory to work well, you need to keep it active. It is worth doing exercises that will be aimed at developing short-term memory. To improve memory, you need to direct your attention to memorizing a certain picture or various data. At the same time, you should not be distracted by other objects.

The properties of short-term memory are directly proportional to human activity. Goals and motives of behavior are also superimposed on it. If a person is forced to constantly perform the same manipulations that cause torment, or an unpleasant stimulus constantly affects him, this does not mean that all these undesirable events will be deposited in the long-term memory of the individual. On the contrary, information (stimulus) devoid of meaning will be eliminated due to the fact that inhibition may be triggered in consciousness. Then the translation of negative information into long-term memory will not occur.

KVP and fiberboard work completely independently of each other. This is especially evident when the individual suffers from retrograde amnesia. In this case, the unpleasant events that happened to him are completely deleted, and events from the distant past remain in the mind.

Let's consider the main characteristics of short-term memory.

This parameter takes into account the optimal amount of data stored in the head. This parameter is only defined for an adult. It is generally accepted that the optimal amount of short-term memory has an average of 7 elements. However, there may also be some fluctuations up or down in the form of two elements.

Of course, it is better to have an average or high score. This will speak of a pretty good short-term memory. When the indicator drops below 5 elements, violations occur that must be corrected by treatment.

D. Miller made a discovery, explaining that as you learn, the above elements are able to combine into blocks. Many people process two pieces of information at once. For example, a driver can drive and talk to a fellow traveler at the same time.

As mentioned above, short-term memory is needed in order to separate the necessary information from the unnecessary, and then delete the latter. Unnecessary information surrounds us everywhere, and if it is fully assimilated by consciousness, then a person will lose orientation in the environment. For example, if an individual perceives and memorizes extraneous sounds and pictures for a long time, then the basic information will simply go nowhere.

During the lecture, the student listens attentively to the lecturer and memorizes only the educational material. And extraneous things in the form of a car horn or the color of the lecturer's clothes are automatically eliminated in his mind.

The hippocampus is the base where one of the main centers of memory is located. Note that memory itself is different. The hippocampus is used when a person needs to memorize a certain path on the route diagram or determine the location of the necessary objects.

And yet information does not remain in the hippocampus for a long time, since this part is considered a short-term storage... Here the transition of short-term memory to long-term memory simply takes place. This is how knowledge travels from the hippocampus to other areas of the head. In order for this process to be successful, a person must fall asleep: only the process of sleep can give electric waves during slow falling asleep, without which the information received earlier will simply disappear.

The hippocampus does not retain memories of events that occurred in the personal life of an individual. Such memories are quickly transferred to the peririnal cortex. And here is the transformation of short-term memory into long-term memory.

There is only one conclusion - the hippocampus is needed to consolidate memory. It works when a person is sleeping. This is why some people can read a poem several times before going to bed and retell it by heart in the morning.

As we already know, in everyday life, when people do not set a direct task to remember something, their short-term memory works. The image lasts for about 30 seconds, and then it is erased. But then, when an individual tries to memorize any information or picture (and be sure to keep this information in his head), he uses such a property of memory as memorization. It is memorization that includes three stages, consider them.

The first part is coding. How it works? First, the person focuses on the image. At the moment, he completely ignores everything unnecessary that surrounds him at the time of encoding.

Let's give an example. You need to remember the periodic table. You are memorizing without looking at what is happening around you. Therefore, when you try to reproduce the numbers from the table, then you can easily do it. However, you will not remember how the car honked under your windows at that time.

It should be borne in mind that each person is individual, therefore, information is encoded in all people in different ways.

• By visual perception. When this happens, then you just see the picture in all its details and remember it, as if photographing. But eidetic memory is unusual for many people. By the way, it is also called photographic. Usually highly intelligent people have such memory.
• Through acoustic perception. This perception is also called phonological. It just works. When a person tries to remember something, he simply repeats the information out loud.

The short-term memory contains two compartments. Experts call them storage facilities. Each storehouse belongs to a different brain structure.One compartment is considered acoustic and is located in the left hemisphere. The baggage of knowledge, which was obtained with the help of hearing, is deposited into it. Another compartment is considered visual-spatial and is located in the right hemisphere. It contains knowledge that was acquired through sight.

Long-term memory contributes to the manifestation of the second part - this is data storage... As we already understand, long-term memory can contain pictures from the past, memories of childhood, adolescence, any events and much more. And such storage of information has no boundaries, unlike short-term memory.

AND the third part is reproduction... Short-term memories at first glance come to mind much more easily than long-term memories. Long-term memories must first be found and brought out, that is, to start brain activity. This takes time. And short-term ones involve memorizing 7 elements.

It is important to know that short-term memory is divided into types by storage duration - there is:

• instant memory, when information is destroyed after 20-30 seconds;
• operational, when information needs to be saved while a decision is being made.

Short-term memory has several types. And it depends on these types of how exactly a person remembers any information.

So, let's consider these types in more detail.

This memory is also called auditory. In this case, the perception of information is assimilated through the hearing aid. When a person has heard something, he simply remembers it. You can remember well only when the information is also spoken out loud. And if this is not done, then it will be erased within 30 seconds.

In this case, a person perceives data from the outside with the help of sight and remembers the picture. When he needs to translate information from short-term memory into long-term memory, he often uses speech coding. This is called the association method, which is very helpful in remembering images.

Tactility translates as “touch”. This means that a person can remember something through touch. And not everyone is capable of such qualities.

To do this, you can use the test. After its application, the volume of short-term memory is determined. In this case, the subject must memorize the numbers for 20 seconds and try to recreate them from memory. The numbers are written on paper by the subjects. So, the numbers to remember:

• 15, 39, 87, 23;
• 94, 65, 79, 46;
• 83, 19, 84, 52.

Memory problems impair quality of life. Their reasons:

• deterioration of health, vitamin deficiency, overwork, poor ecology;
• passion for bad habits;
• circulatory disorders of the brain;
• various brain pathologies;
• trauma;
• mental illness;
• Alzheimer's disease;
• mental retardation.

When memory has deteriorated, you can observe the following symptoms:

• when a person suddenly begins to remember and reproduce many events with an abnormal speed - this is hypermnesia;
• the individual completely forgets the events that occurred in a certain period - this is amnesia;
• when a person's memory is partially reduced, this is hypomnesia.

General symptoms of memory impairment:

• forgetfulness or confusion;
• social maladjustment and inability to reproduce events;
• autism, confusion, problems with the nervous system.

Memory can be developed through a series of exercises.

• Ask your friend to write 20 words on a piece of paper. Memorize them for 1 minute. Then write what you remember on a piece of paper. The more words, the better the memory. If it turns out badly, then you need to train your memory and constantly repeat the exercise (just write new words each time).
• Try writing a series of numbers on a piece of paper so that each subsequent digit represents the sum of the previous digits. For example: 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 + 3 = 8, and so on.
• Another workout. You need to involuntarily open a book on any page and read 1 paragraph. Then try to retell the text in as much detail as possible.
• Put 10 colorful objects on the table and memorize their location, color, shape for 1 minute. Then cover the items with a cloth and tell everything in detail about the items you saw.