Lesson 8. Making Associations

 

We have all heard that the key to memorization is associating new information to be memorized with related information that we already have memorized. Why does this work? How does it work to form memories?

Perhaps the first point we should make is that associations can be made passively and unintentionally or with deliberate attempt. Let us examine each way in turn.

Unintentional Associations

Ivan Pavlov was famous for discovering this kind of associative learning. He called it conditioned learning. The term was later modified to “classical conditioned learning,” because another form of passive associations was discovered that was called “operant conditioning.”

You may have heard about Pavlov’s study of dogs. He was initially studying digestion, and collected saliva and stomach juices to see how they responded to food. What he observed, not surprisingly, was that when hungry dogs smelled or saw food, they anticipated eating it by secreting saliva and stomach juices. This did not have to be learned—it’s an unconditioned response. It was just a natural, built-in response. What was surprising was that when the dog caretaker entered the room, the juices were released, even if the caretaker was not bringing food. They had learned to associate this person with food delivery. The two things went together. So, Pavlov made a more formal test of this “conditioned learning” by pairing a different kind of cue with food delivery. For example, he might ring a bell and then the food was brought in. If that situation were repeated several times, the dogs started salivating when they heard the bell. They were now learning a new association: bell ringing meant that food was likely to show up.  In general, the key is to pair an unlearned response with an association cue and repeat the cue often enough that the brain learns that the two things go together.

Operant conditioning was spawned by the discovery of Edward Thorndike, a contemporary of Pavlov. Thorndike observed that learning occurs from realization of the consequences of behavior. That is, behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated. Procedures for optimizing this kind of conditioned were developed later by J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner.

Several principles of operant conditioning have been discovered:

1. Rewards seem to be more effective than punishments.
2. The animal must do something that can be associated with subsequent reinforcement, even though the animal has no foreknowledge of what it is supposed to do.
3. Learning complex repertoires can be developed in which the final desired behavior can be shaped through a succession of small steps in which elements of the final behavior are sequentially produced. As each step is learned, the trainer builds on that by adding the next logical small step.
4. Reinforcement needs to be provided each time the desired behavior occurs.

Intentional Associations 

Associations are much more powerful if you make them consciously and intentionally. This approach puts the learner in charge of her own learning. The learner gets to choose which associations are the most powerful association cues, and that likely varies from person to person.

The reason that intentional associations work to improve memory is that memories are stored as a network of related items. These items are part of a shared whole. Any one item serves as a cue for retrieving other parts of the memory network. Dragging out one item in the network often drags the whole network of memory items into conscious awareness.

Even so, certain principles apply here.

Pick Relevant Associations

Associations can be made with a person, place, object, situation, or emotion. Pick whatever works best for the item you are trying to remember.

Use Images

The most important act is to use images rather than words as the associational cues. Images contain detail in a way that is automatically associated with other elements in the image. Thus, it is especially important to select images that clearly and rather directly capture the essence of what you are trying to remember. Note the image used here of overlapping circles of slightly different shades of color. The point of association and shared relatedness is obvious.

You can make up your own images or use images that are already established for certain mnemonic systems. Mnemonics will be explored in detail in Lesson 9.

Why do images make the best associations?  

 

“A picture is worth a thousand words for scientific reasons: The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Forty percent of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked to the retina. Visual information comprises 90 percent of the data that comes to our brain, suggesting that our neurological pathways might even prefer pictures over text.”- Quoted from https://www.planview.com/resources/articles/what-is-kanban/.

Make the Association Concrete and Vivid

Vagueness won’t work well. Make associations that are clear, distinctive, and clearly relevant to what you are trying to memorize.

Tie the Association to the Key Item to be Remembered

Suppose you have to catch an airplane at 2 A.M. in the morning. The number two is the key element. How can you link that to flying in an airplane? You might think of airplanes as have two wings. Suppose the flight is 4 A.M? You might think of a big jet with four jet engines. Suppose the plane leaves at 3? You might imagine looking into the cockpit and seeing three people (perhaps pilot, co-pilot, and navigator).

Make the Association Personal. Add strong emotions.

Relevance is key. Making an association personal gives it more relevance. Because emotions are processed in the same part of the brain that forms memories (the hippocampus), emotional associations become strongly embedded in memory.

Repeat a Newly Created Association Right Away

An association has to be encoded, just like an original item to be remembered. So, once you have created the association, repeat it several times right away, and then a few more times later in the same day.

 

Next lesson from “Memory Medic”  to be posted soon: Lesson #9: Mnemonics

Follow my “neuro-education” group on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4883556/

To check out my four books on learning and memory, see my web site: WRKlemm.com

 

Lesson 7. Strategic Approaches

 

Different learning tasks typically benefit from a prior analysis of how to approach the task. You wouldn’t want to approach learning mathematics the same way you would learn history. Because it is not feasible to specify an approach of all possible learning tasks in this short lesson, I will suggest some more general ideas.

Steps

Step 1. Assessment. The first thing to do is over-all assessment of the task. That is, identify how much you already know, which parts of the task are not even understood at the moment, which ideas and factoids you can figure out, and which you will have to memorize.

Step 2. Tackle the confusion. For the parts you don’t understand, go to whatever teaching resource needed to explain it. Why try to memorize something you don’t understand? In fact, the very process of trying to understand helps to form memory. Commonly, multiple explanations are needed in order to find the one that “clicks” with your capacity to understand. Sometimes asking a question in a web browser field will take you directly to a site that explains what you are looking for. Sometimes Wikipedia works. Sometimes Kahn Academy works. Use what works for you.

Step 3. Isolate what requires memorization. Why memorize trivia? Why memorize information that you can easily figure out? Save your brain energy and power for difficult memorization tasks.

Step 4. Develop a task-specific memorization tactic and/or mnemonic. When confronted with a learning challenge, ask yourself, “What is the best way for me to memorize this? What associations and cues will help? What that I already know makes this easier to understand and remember? Can I develop a mnemonic that makes this easy to recall?

Some General Tactics

Encoding.

Encoding refers to conscious registration of the information you are trying to memorize. Perhaps you have heard of the phenomenon known as “inattentional blindness,” wherein you can see things but not realize your eyes have seen them, and your conscious mind is unaware of them. The point is that you are only conscious of targets of attention. Conscious awareness strengthens encoding. Be aware. Focus, focus, focus.

Encoding is also strengthened by thinking about relationships and associated cues that can be attached to targets of attention. Recall what I said earlier in the lesson on concept maps.

Spaced Learning.

Students like to cram for exams. They often do this the night before an exam, studying late into the night and thus making themselves sleep deprived, which only compounds their mental performance on the exam because sleep deprivation makes it difficult to think straight.

The more fundamental problem is that memory formation takes time. The process, called consolidation, is like wet cement: impressions take a while to set up. After all, long-term memory is stored in the gene activation, protein synthesis, and growth of new neuronal membrane and synapses. Spreading out the study allows time for these processes to occur and complete robust consolidation. Also, the passage of time allows for relevant new thoughts and associations to attach to the memory and thus strengthen it.

Applications.

Using what you have just learned, especially soon after initial encoding, enriches the encoding, creates new associational cues, and allows the learned material to stay active long enough in neuronal circuitry to enhance the consolidation process. When application occurs in contexts other than that of initial exposure, it creates new frames of reference cues and may even broaden the depth of understanding. Furthermore, new handles for retrieval emerge.

Forced Retrieval.

Many students study by “looking over” their notes and learning resource materials. This creates the illusion that they are improving their memory. However, research has shown that strong memories require one to force retrieval. For example, if you are studying flash cards, you look at the question side of the card and mentally quiz yourself on what you think is on the answer side of the card, before you look at it to check for accuracy. The reason that forced retrieval works is that each time you retrieve a memory, its encoding can be strengthened by adding new associations and thoughts. In any case, once retrieved, the memory has to be reconsolidated, which adds to the strength of information storage.

Deliberate Practice.

In lesson 12, I will explain this more completely. For now, just realize that effective study requires not only forced retrieval, but also awareness of what you are retrieving and error checking and correction as needed.

Mnemonic Devices. 

These will be covered in Lesson 9. They can be extremely powerful. People who compete in memory contests rely exclusively of mnemonics. These contestants are just normal people who do not have a natural “photographic memory.”

Flash Cards. 

In a study by Katherine Rawsom at Williams College, students studied 35 Swahili-English word pairs on flash cards. The students were asked to practice until they got the vocabulary correct using either the entire stack or five stacks of seven cards each. Researchers instructed students to study the flashcards until they had gotten each translation correct either once, five, or 10 times, before taking a final quiz a week later. Getting the stack correct five times was three times more effective for the final quiz score than getting the stack correct only once. Also, study of one big stack was better than five little ones.

Students had predicted just the opposite. They expected studying smaller groups of flashcards would be more helpful than studying the big stack, and they expected no real benefit from studying cards more than once. Those who had studied the small stacks expected to remember nearly 60 percent of words, yet they recalled only 17 percent. In general, students were incorrect in two ways: 1) they give too little value to learning strategies that are difficult (using multiple sessions on the big stack), and 2) they give too much value to strategies that were later documented to be less effective.

 

Next Lesson from “Memory Medic:” Lesson 8. Making Associations

Follow my “neuro-education” group on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4883556/

To check out my four books on learning and memory, see my web site: WRKlemm.com

Lesson 6. Concept Maps.

Facts and ideas can be mapped in ways that show how they relate to each other. The map drawing usually begin with outlined notes, because few people can think fast enough to construct a map in real time during a lecture or video. In simple mind mapping, basic ideas are stated within circles, forming word clouds, and arrows are drawn from “parent” to “daughter” clouds. A useful addition is to write in brief text along the arrows that explain what the relationship is, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Simple concept map for the relationship of cells and their organelles. Cross-linking is not shown because it is not particularly useful for this simple information cluster.

Each circle object in the map can be expanded to whatever level of detail is required. In the map above, for example, from “History” you could add a circle for “Hooke” with a labeled connecting arrow saying “the first pioneer was.”

Think with Concept Mapping

Recall lesson 4, where we made the point that thinking about what you are trying to memorize makes the memory process easier and more reliable. Memory becomes easier when you think about the context and ancillary information associated with your memory targets. If the material you are trying to learn is complex, it often helps to convert your notes into concept maps. In concept maps, you draw circles or other geometric shaped word clouds to act as containers for key information, and then you think about how the various items in the circles relate to other items to create concepts. You draw connections among the various circles and write in a few words to state the nature of each relationship.

This process is like so-called mind mapping, except that concept mapping captures information as nodes in an interconnected network, unlike the tree-like structure of mind maps that have one central idea with multiple branches. Concept maps allow multiple cross-connections among the various idea nodes and typically emphasize multiple inter-dependent relationships among the nodes.

The basic task is to think about the relationships among the linked word clouds. A good practical way to automate thinking is to make concept maps as you read, listen to lectures or watch education videos. With pencil and paper write down key words in different locations on the page for major facts and ideas as you encounter them in the learning material and draw a circle around them. Then, perhaps after the lecture, video, or reading, examine each item one at a time and draw a line to any of the other items to which it is associated. Along each line, write in a few words to state what the relationship is. For example, you might link idea A with idea B with the description “makes me ask,” “led to the wrong idea that,” “leads to the truly original idea of,” or whatever might be appropriate. Note that comments work best if they are based on active verbs. This learning strategy is useful for several reasons:

1. Maps give the learner a “bird’s eye view” of the big picture.

2. Learners must engage with the material (i.e. be especially mindful) in order to draw the  

map of key concepts.

3. Learners have to organize information in meaningful ways, a process that requires them to  

think, which facilitates memory storage and retrieval.

4. Information is displayed spatially, which in itself facilitates storage and retrieval. 

Memorizing things by mentally relating them to their location in space promotes remembering because the part of the brain that forms lasting memories (the hippocampus) is also the part of the brain that creates subconscious mental maps of objects in space.

How to Make the Maps

As with creating regular notes, doing it by hand is more engaging and more likely to be memorized easily. However, with maps created by hand, you can’t move objects around; you must erase and write back in. However, that is less of a problem if you have a computer with draw capability. Another option is to create an initial step of placing sticky notes on a wall and moving them around physically to see what is the best spatial layout.

Map construction can be facilitated by computer. There are many elegant computer programs, and some quite satisfactory programs are free (search Google for “free mind maps”) (I like X Mind). Most programs make it easy to move ideas around in the map and make multiple, non-linear links. Not all programs allow elaboration along linking lines, and you may have to write it in by hand. 

Actually, I think maps are a better memorization aid if they are hand-drawn, because that makes the process more personal, more flexible, and perhaps more engaging. If you change your mind about something you put in the map, you either have to erase it or re-draw the map. One option is to draw the map by hand at first and then re-do it later by computer.

Too much text annotation adds to clutter. Clutter is inevitable with broad topics that involve many ideas. Some computer programs create a map that requires a huge sheet of paper to get printed, and you can’t get it all on an 8.5 x 11 sheet without compressing the text so much it is unreadable. The solution here is to make multiple maps, one an overview of the whole thing (main ideas and first- or second-order sub-topics. Then each major sub-idea can have its own map.

Maps to Study By

Maps used for study purposes need to be kept compact and simple. Memorization is facilitated by using icons or drawings to represent ideas is more effective than a lot of text. Some computer programs even have a library of icons you can select. Just make sure the icons are effective representations of the text they substitute for. You might want to use text and a representative icon, but base your memorization rehearsals on the icon.

Concept maps not only direct you to think about and organize academic content, they also promote memorization because concepts are laid out in spatial arrays.

The study emphasis should be on the relationships. That will automatically help memorize the factoids in the word clouds and stimulate your thinking to develop new understanding and insights. Also, make it a point to note the spatial location of key word clouds.