The Act of Building Something Again
Writing and Remembering: Why We Recall What We Write
A few weeks ago I wrote a post on notation-taking skills. One common feel many people have, and that several people mentioned in response to that post, is that when they take good notes they remember things well enough that they rarely end up having to look at their notes again.
In fact, it seems that writing annihilation down makes usa remember it better. On the other hand, non writing things down is merely asking to forget. Information technology's a kind of mental Catch-22: the only style non to have to write things down is to write them downward so y'all remember them well enough non to take written them downwards.
Oy.
Curious nearly this, I decided to do some inquiry into the psychology of writing and memory. As it happens, I have quite a background in the anthropology of memory, none of which did me any good reviewing the psychological literature. At that place's non a lot out there, non that I could hands find anyway (not being familiar with the psychological literature probably hampered my search) but what I did detect was interesting. Seems it'southward non simply wishful thinking that lets us ignore our notes one time they're written; there'southward skilful testify that the deed of writing itself helps u.s. call back things meliorate.
Not all things, though. What'southward especially interesting is that writing things down appears to assistance us remember the important stuff, and that the meliorate our notes are the more likely we are to retrieve.
But first, some basic neuropsychology (!). The brain is divided upwards into several regions that process different kinds of information. There are split regions that process visual information, auditory information, emotions, exact communication, and and then on. Although these different regions communicate with each other (for example, when we look at a slice of art nosotros often take an emotional response, which we might then transmit to the language center of our brain to share verbally) each of them has its own processes it has to complete first. (OK, this is all a vast over-simplification, simply what can I say? I didn't take notes that 24-hour interval in Neuropsychology 101…)
When nosotros heed to a lecture, the office of our brain that handles listening and language is engaged. This passes some information on to our memory, only doesn't seem to be very discriminating in how it does this. So crucial information is treated exactly the aforementioned fashion that trivia is treated.
When we take notes, though, something happens. As we're writing, nosotros create spatial relations betwixt the various bits of data we are recording. Spatial tasks are handled past another role of the encephalon, and the act of linking the verbal information with the spatial relationship seems to filter out the less relevant or of import information.
So hither'due south what happens: in i psychological test involving students watching a lecture on psychology (psychologists who work in academia have a virtually unlimited supply of research subjects — their students!) students who did not take notes remembered the same number of points as the students who did take notes. That is, the mere act of taking notes did not increase the amount of stuff they memorized. Both groups of students remembered around 40% of the information covered in the lecture (which as a professor makes me distressing, but I guess that's the way humans work). But the students who had taken notes remembered a higher proportion of fundamental facts, while those who did non take notes remembered a more or less random array of points covered in the lecture.
What this and other tests suggest is that when nosotros write — earlier we write, although indistinguishably so — we are putting some degree of thought into evaluating and ordering the information that we are receiving. That procedure, and not the notes themselves, is what helps set up ideas more firmly in our minds, leading to greater remember down the line.
Which is fine for notes, but what near other kids of writing? Obviously the same matter happens: in building a link between the spatial part of our encephalon that nosotros demand to employ in gild to make marks on newspaper that brand sense (that is, to write) and the exact part of our brain that we demand to compose meaningful utterances to supply our writing hand with, we strengthen the procedure past which important data is stored in our retentiveness.
But at that place's something else going on, likewise. When we write something downwards, research suggests that as far as our brain is concerned, information technology's every bit if nosotros were doing that thing. Writing seems to human action every bit a kind of mini-rehearsal for doing. I've written before nearly how visualizing doing something tin can "trick" the encephalon into thinking information technology's actually doing information technology, and writing something down seems to use enough of the brain to trigger this effect. Again, this leads to greater memorization, the aforementioned fashion that visualizing the performance of a new skill can actually amend our skill level.
The offset thing just near every personal productivity author in the world tells us is to write everything down. If you're a "writer-downer", you know how important this is, and you know that information technology works. Hopefully, now you know a little bit about why it works, too.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/writing-and-remembering-why-we-remember-what-we-write.html
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