Memory Techniques for Interpreters

1. Memory Techniquesfor Interpreters Mayo Clinic Workshop II

2. Objectives of Workshop II • The participant should be able to: • Review/identify the three stages involved in memory • Describe the four phases of memory tasks • Discuss general properties of memory • Explain the Stroop Effect • Apply techniques and mnemonic devices for memory enhancement in interpreting: • Association • Visualization • Chaining • Method of Loci • Acronyms and Acrostics

3. Message Relay Situation & Roles • You are all part of a large corporation. One of your divisions manufactures parts for aircraft. Your group consists of the following chain of command. Divide into groups of 5-6 and assign your own roles. Do not take notes nor ask for clarification or repetition! Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vice-President Division Manager Production Manager Supervisor Factory Worker

4. Discussion Questions: • How did listening skills and memory skills affect the accuracy of the message? • What types of information were retained? • What was omitted? • What types of errors were encountered: omissions or deletions, additions, substitutions and message inaccuracy.

5. Power of the human mind: The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig eh?

6. Memory Flow Chart The flowchart for the theory of memory discussed in the first session indicates that all incoming information first passes through Sensory Memory (SM) before it enters Short­Term Memory (STM). There it can be maintained by rehearsal and either successfully encoded for storage in Long­Term Memory (LTM) or forgotten. In retrieval, the information passes from LTM back to STM, where it enters our consciousness. A summary of the characteristics of each stage of memory follows.

7. Three Stages of Memory

8. Characteristics of the Three Memory Stages

9. Types of Memory • Short Term Memory- Where sensory data is first transmitted to for processing and evaluation- Aging impacts the depth of processing that occurs in STM, sending less to LTM

10. Types of Memory • Long Term Memory- Where STM is encoded for long-term storage and future retrieval • How quickly and reliably we recall it depends on: • Activation: How long since we last used the information. • Strength: How well we have practiced it • Archival Memory (a type of LTM)- Used in the ultra-long term storage of memories

11. Long Term Memory

12. Working Memory • Here we address why we can rehearse only limited information at a time. • Articulatory Loop • Rehearsal limitations are due to limits in how long it takes verbal material to decay, not how many items we can store. Hence, the faster we can rehearse, the more we can store (Baddeley, 1986).

13. Memory terms • Complex mental function having four distinct phases: (1) encoding or learning, (2) retention, (3) recall/retrieval, and (4) recognition. Clinically, it is usually subdivided into immediate, recent, and remote memory.

14. Retention • The persistence to perform a learned behavior (facts or experiences) after an interval has elapsed in which there has been no performance or practice of the behavior.

15. Memory Theory • Recognition vs. Recall Issues- Recognition - seeing something and knowing what it is- Recall - very construction oriented; requires making connections • The process whereby a representation of past experience is elicited. - As we age, our recognition abilities get stronger while recall weakens- Recognition scenarios (like multiple choice exams) are better for older learners

16. Mnemonic • 'Mnemonic' is another word for memory tool. Mnemonics are methods for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall. The basic principle of mnemonics is to use as many of the best functions of your brain as possible to store information.

17. Use Your Whole Mind To Remember • By coding language and numbers in striking images, you can reliably code both information and the structure of information. You can then easily recall these later.

18. You can do the following things to make your mnemonics more memorable: • Use positive, pleasant images. The brain often blocks out unpleasant ones • Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images - these are easier to remember than drab ones • Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.

19. Mnemonics continued . . . • Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of association, or to help you to remember actions. • Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image • Use humor! Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than normal ones. • Similarly rude rhymes are very difficult to forget! • Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.) can code quite complex messages quickly and effectively.

20. How does our memory work? • We remember things by association. Every piece of information in our memory is connected to other pieces in some way or another. For example, if you are given the word "apple", what do you think of? Perhaps something like this: • APPLE: red, round, sweet, teacher, tree, fruit • But it's unlikely that we might see "apple" and think of "dog". And what if you were asked what the 7th letter of the alphabet was? Chances are, you wouldn't know that "G = 7," but you could easily think to yourself, "A B C D E F G," and then say "G". You used association to get to the letter G, because you knew A was the first letter, then you kept choosing the next letter in the sequence until you got to the right one.

21. Association • If memory works by association, we actively work to create an association between two bits of information. For example, for the plane that we need to catch at 2 P.M., we can imagine the plane in our mind, and notice that it has 2 wings. Two wings, 2 P.M. There's an association by means of a visualization. We are now ten times more likely to remember the take-off time long after it has faded from our short-term memory.

22. Association • When pieces of information are not obviously related in any way, however, we have to be a bit more creative in linking things together. But it isn't as hard as it seems. Most of us learned rhymes and acronyms in school that helped us remember things. Do any of the following look familiar to you? • i before e except after c, or when sounded like a as in neighbor and weigh (rule for remembering ei or ie) • ROY G. BIV (colors of the rainbow) • All Cows Eat Grass; Every Good Boy Does Fine (notes of musical scale) • Never Eat Sour Watermelons (directions on a compass)

23. Association exercise • To demonstrate how effectively this works, look at the following list of words, and try to come up with an association between the left word and the right word of each row. Some will be easy; others may be harder. As an example, for the first pair, you might want to imagine a mouse that has a long, wavy tail that is in the shape of the letter S.

24. Association exercise • mouse S • fur R • train bridge • moat boat • popcorn chair • elephant pancake • toothbrush canal • umbrella triangle

25. Association exercise • After you have formed the associations, cover up the right side of the list and then try to name the word associated with each word on the left. If you formed vivid, clear associations, you may be surprised at how quickly and easily you were able to remember everything!

26. Association exercise • mouse • fur • train • moat • popcorn • elephant • toothbrush • umbrella

27. Other properties of memory: • Law of Recency: • We are more likely to remember things that happened recently than those that happened a long time ago. You can probably remember what you had for dinner yesterday, but not what you ate for dinner two weeks ago today.

28. Law of Recency • A list of 20 words will be read. Your job is to remember as many of the words as possible. Write down the words that you can remember immediately after reading the list.

29. List of words cat apple ball tree square head house door box car king hammer milk fish book tape arrow flower key shoe

30. Law of Recency . . . and Primacy • This type of experiment provides evidence that there are 2 types of memory processes. It is thought that memory is good for the words read last because they are still in short term memory - this is the recency effect. Memory is good for the words read first because they made it into long term memory - this is the primacy effect.

31. Memory properties • Law of Vividness: • We tend to remember the most spectacular or striking impressions rather than those that are more ordinary. You can probably remember what you did on your last birthday, or perhaps the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, but not what happened on the previous day of those occasions (unless, that too, was a "special" occasion).

32. Law of Vividness: • We are much better at remembering pictures than we are at remembering words and names. There are probably biological and evolutionary reasons for that. When subjects are asked to recognize a small set of photos that they saw the previous day from a larger set, they typically recognize around 97%.

33. The Method of Loci • Devised during the Roman Empire, the method of loci uses the chaining method with a twist. Now all the items to-be-remembered are linked to specific places in the order you would visit them. For example, you might think of the route you take to work:

34. Remembering by location • Your room (you wake up) • Your kitchen (you have breakfast) • Front door of your house • Bus stop • Bus seat • Friend's house that you see from the bus • Gas Station that you see from the bus • Market that you see from the bus • Workplace

35. Method of loci • Now you must link the items that you want remembered to each of these places. You have to remember the places first, of course, but this should be easy. Then chain each item to the places...remember, the more wild your idea the better. Using a grocery store example: milk pouring on you in your room, bread that you can't get out of the toaster (kitchen), eggs splattered on your front door, etc.

36. Concrete Words, Abstract Words and Nonsense • The ability to recall a word depends on how meaningful the word is to a person. Along with the meaningfulness of a word, the "concreteness" of a word is important for memory. Concreteness refers the ability of a word to form a mental image. A word with high concreteness is easy to "see"; a word with low concreteness (an "abstract" word) is difficult to visualize.

37. Concrete words • Here are three lists of words: concrete words, abstract words and nonsense words. See which list is easier to memorize. You could also read these lists to other people to see how many words from each list they remember.

38. alligatorapplearrowbabybirdbookbutterflycarcornflower hammerhouselemonmicroscopeoceanpencilrockshoestablewindow Concrete words

39. angerbeliefboredomchanceconcepteffortfatefreedomgloryhappinessangerbeliefboredomchanceconcepteffortfatefreedomgloryhappiness honorhopeideainterestknowledgemercymoodmoraltheorytruth Abstract words

40. atorbotamcrovdifimfirapglimocgriculhilnimjolibkepwin lumalmibnatpempeyrimrispawstiwintubivvopecyapib Nonsense words

41. Memory properties • Law of Frequency: • We tend to remember things we experience the most often, rather than those we experience only once in a while. You are much more likely to remember your name or your phone number than the square root of 3 (unless you are a mathematician).

42. Memory properties • With a strong emotional context, it is likely that events will be better remembered. The part of the brain responsible for autobiographical memories is called the medial temporal lobe. Researchers have hypothesized that a structure deep in this temporal lobe, called the amygdala acts together with other structures of the medial temporal lobe to enhance the ability of the brain to process, encode and retrieve emotional events.

43. Short Term Memory Test • Directions • You are about do a small short term memory test. A few letters will flash on your computer monitor for 3 seconds. Your job is to write down as many letters as you can remember after they disappear. • 1. • 2. • 3. • 4. • 5. • 6.

44. U M

45. T Z L D

46. KXCEJO

47. AVCYISEH

48. LBFQRPMAUX

49. ZQECTBUMONRV

50. STM exercise • How did you do? Compare your results with the table on this page. How many letters from each trial did you remember? Is there a "pattern" to the letters that you remembered? For example, did you remember the first few letters better than the middle letters? Did you remember the last letters?