Strengthening Paired Associate Memory with Song

We are continuing our series of posts by Beth Guadagni, who shares the strategies she uses teaching her students with dyslexia in Colorado. 

Like many students, mine have struggled to learn their math facts. Automaticity with the multiplication tables is essential for math far beyond simply multiplying numbers; students use multiplication when working with fractions, doing long division, calculating area and volume, and in so many other applications that it seems rather silly to try to list them!

Perhaps most importantly: students need to have a sense of multiplication to determine whether a solution to a math problem makes sense. As Dr. Yellin will tell you, memorizing math facts involves a particular part of memory called paired-associate memory. Paired associate memory involves linking and storing two related data bits, retrieving one piece of information when presented with the other piece (eg., a sound with a symbol, or the number 28 when presented with 4x7).

Paired-associate memory is what we use when we learn someone’s name, remember that the color of the sky is called “blue,” pair the /ch/ sound with a "c" and an "h" together, etc. There’s no immediate context for these associations (although savvy students and educators can invent contexts to make information “make sense”); they just have to be memorized. Paired-associate memory is generally not a strength for dyslexic students, like mine, although people who don’t have dyslexia may struggle with this skill as well.

I learned skip-counting songs from a colleague and was amazed by the ease with which her fifth graders learned the number sequences. I was eager to try this concept in my class, but I was a bit apprehensive, too. Would my high school students be willing to sing strings of numbers to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “The Wheels on the Bus”? The answer was a resounding “yes!” Although they were a little hesitant at first, my students were as pleased as I was that they could commit number sequences to memory with only a little practice. In fact (and this is true), one day one of my students, frowning darkly, exploded, “I’m really mad that I made it to eleventh grade before anyone taught me this!”

I’m going to spread the sequences over a few posts, which also is what one should do when teaching these songs. I’ll share a game for practicing math facts in each post, too. Learning the songs is important, but it’s not enough; one has to practice using the sequences to answer actual math facts, too. We'll present detailed instructions on how to use this technique in your classroom in our next post, but you can get a sense of how this process sounds from this YouTube video, posted by another teacher who used this technique. 

More From the Trenches: Interleaving to Maintain Math Mastery

We are continuing our series of posts by Beth Guadagni, who shares the strategies she uses in her Colorado classroom. Today, she looks at how she uses interleaving to help students maintain math mastery.

Purpose:
To help students retain math procedures they’ve already learned.

Materials:
Math problems from previously studied units

Procedure:
I put together review sheets that students complete a few times a week. A simpler approach would be to flip backward in a textbook, choose a few pages at random, and do a problem from each section. Note that students should have a way to check their answers* if they’re going to tackle this independently.

Why This Works:
Like many students, my group generally does a good job of performing newly learned procedures once they’ve had some practice. Performing that procedure a few weeks or months down the road is a different story. To combat this, I use interleaving, one of Dr. Yellin’s most useful and widely applicable strategies.

One thing we know about memory is that we’re able to store a lot more things than we’re able to find easily, rather like a very large, disorganized closet. Brains are good at keeping thought processes efficient, and so information that we have to access often is stored in a place that makes it easier to find. Information we don’t need often, however, takes a lot longer to find, and sometimes we can’t find it at all. Here in Colorado, my students spend a lot of time enjoying the outdoors, so I use a trail analogy to explain this to them. A pathway that is traveled often is well worn, making easy to find and follow. You can hike faster along a trail that’s been traveled a lot, just like one’s brain can quickly find information that has to be accessed frequently. A less popular trail, though, like a seldom-referenced memory, is much more challenging. You might lose it altogether, and if you can follow it, your progress is going to be slowed by rocks and overgrown plants.

Back to math: Constantly circling back to concepts we covered earlier in the year causes my students continually access procedures they’ve stored in their long-term memories, communicating to their brains that this information is important and so the pathways to it need to be efficient. My students complete only a problem or two from each past unit of study at a time, and we spend only five to ten minutes reviewing every few days. This small investment pays off in a big way, though; when I graded their math finals at the end of the last semester, I was pleased to see that they recalled concepts from August just as well as the ones they’d learned in mid-December.



*See our previous post on Photomath, a free app that uses smartphone cameras to scan and solve math problems.

.
Photo by Matt Gross on Unsplash

The Phenomenon of Motivated Forgetting

Every fall, students return to school with a little bit less academic knowledge than they left with in June. There is no shortage of reasons or hypotheses for why this happens, but three researchers recently wanted to look more closely at what might be getting in the way of students taking their learning with them across time. Ramirez, Jin, and McDonough, at The University of California and The University of Alabama,* explored the topic of motivated forgetting in college students – the concept that we may deliberately remove “unwanted memories” from our awareness because unpleasant memories may threaten our sense of self. 

In general, motivated forgetting is “the process by which people have difficulty recalling information and memories for events that are unpleasant, painful, or generally threatening to the self-perceptions” that we work to build about ourselves*. In other words, we are motivated to forget information that is damaging to our ego, or sense of self. As an example, researchers have found that people are less able to recall information from historical passages about atrocities when the perpetrators of those atrocities belong to the individual’s cultural group. The idea behind this is that it would be damaging to that person’s sense of self or identity to know that information, and so they are unconsciously motivated to forget it. When this research was applied to feedback about behaviors, psychologists found that even though people are just as good at recalling negative and positive feedback about behaviors peripheral to the self (i.e., not that important to one’s ego), they had a harder time recalling negative as compared to positive feedback regarding behaviors that are central to their sense of self. In other words, if I think of myself as a very honest person, and I am given feedback about how I engaged in a dishonest behavior as well as feedback about how I engaged in honest behavior, I am going to have a harder time remembering the negative feedback. This would not be the case if honesty was not one of the most important traits I think about when I consider my sense of self.

Interesting, but how does this relate to students' loss of academic knowledge after their summer break? 

Ramirez, Jin, and McDonough wanted to see whether students in a difficult math course suffered from motivated forgetting after the semester ended (i.e., during summer break). They hypothesized that students with a high math self-concept who felt stressed out by the course would have a harder time remembering what they learned as compared to students who did not consider math as integral to their sense of self, even if they were just as stressed out. The researchers tested this by giving the students an extra final exam, two weeks into their summer break (lucky them!). They found that, indeed, students who were more stressed out by the coursework were more likely to forget information, but only if they had a higher mathematics self-concept. Students who did not consider math an integral part of their identity were not affected by the stress.

This finding may seem a little surprising, since we would expect that students who care deeply about a topic will remember more of it. However, this study has pointed out for us that the more deeply we care about a subject or the more we feel it is an integral part of our self, the more we may be affected by ongoing stress about that subject or relevant coursework. Humans are always trying to protect their egos, so it makes sense that we would push out information after it is no longer critical if that information is putting our sense of self off balance. In other words, the students in the study didn’t forget the information until after the course ended because prior to that, it was critical to their grades. Once summer hit, it was relatively safe to forget. However, looking at the bigger picture, we know that math is cumulative, and the information learned in one course is important to take with us to the next, especially for the students in the study, who were primarily going towards majors and careers in fields related to STEM. 

The researchers published this work with the hope that educators will work on implementing stress-reduction techniques into their teaching. They also briefly discussed the concept of teaching students to interpret stress, and even failure, as a positive rather than a negative force. Ramirez, Jin, and McDonough emphasized that, based on research done previously, it’s important to help students “approach classroom stress as a normal challenge that is a part of the learning process rather than a threat to their self-perception” so that they can avoid this phenomenon of motivated forgetting*** . We’ve written many times before about the concept of mindset, originated by Dr. Carol Dweck, which can be a useful classroom teaching tool for helping students at all grade levels learn about the positive value of failure. Ramirez, Jin, and McDonough make an even stronger case for its presence in the classroom, so as we settle in to the school year, let’s remember to give our students a reason to embrace the learning process, even if it is a little stressful.



* Ramirez, G., McDonough, I. M., & Jin, L. (2017). Classroom stress promotes motivated forgetting of mathematics knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 812-825. 

** p. 812

*** p. 821

Sleep and Productive Forgetting

We’ve blogged numerous times over the years about sleep, from sleep recommendations to tips for waking up. Meanwhile, scientists have been spending many of their waking moments trying to learn more about this important but not wholly understood phenomenon. The New York Times highlighted some recent findings.

Examination of mouse brains has revealed that their brain synapses, and accompanying amounts of surface proteins, are smaller when sleeping than when awake. Researchers were able to use a chemical to block this synaptic pruning in some mice but not others. All of the mice, before any were exposed to the chemical, were given a mild shock when they walked over a particular section of the floor. The mice that were then exposed to the chemical overnight, so were prevented from pruning their brain synapses, exhibited trepidation regardless of what environment they were placed in the next day. The mice that had been able to do their regular synaptic pruning only froze up in the particular area where they had received the shock.

The results suggested to one of the researchers that “You can forget in a smart way.” In this experiment, synaptic pruning seemed to narrow down or restrict the shock memory to the particular environment in which it occurred. At least one function of sleep may be for the brain to do some strategic self-editing to keep memories from becoming fuzzy.

photo credit: Rachel Fury via FlickrCC

Caffeine and Memory

Anyone who has spent time at the Yellin Center may notice that we like our coffee. But we know that some research has raised issues about the impact of caffeine on learning and development, specifically noting in a blog we wrote last fall that Swiss researchers found that caffeine can slow brain development in rats. Caffeine consumption in young people is significant -- a recent study in Pediatrics notes that approximately 73 percent of children ages 2-11 consumed caffeine in a given day-- and rates of consumption are remaining steady, even as children drink less soda, because highly caffeinated energy drinks are accounting for a higher proportion of caffeine intake.

We were therefore pleased to find some good news about caffeine in a recent study appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience. It had long been known that ingesting caffeine before learning tasks improved subjects' memory for the material learned. In the new studies, the order of was changed; first, test subjects learned new material and only after that did they consume caffeine. The researchers found that this post-learning intake of caffeine had a positive impact on memory as much as 24 hours after caffeine ingestion. There was a correlation between the amount of caffeine ingested, with the maximal impact leveling off after 200 mg. (roughly the amount in one to two cups of medium strength coffee). Of note, this research was done on people, not rats.

So what is the "take away" from this study? Parents still need to keep a careful eye on the caffeine consumption of their children, but perhaps adding coffee to the mix for older students during exam week might not be such a bad idea.

Photo Credit: Toshiyuki IMAI/flickr

Marijuana Use Impedes Development in Young Brains

A series of studies indicate that teenagers who use marijuana are doing more than just flirting with a gateway drug: They’re probably doing lasting damage to their still-developing brains. A review from the University of Wisconsin, which examines data from studies on both teenage binge drinking and marijuana use, found that adolescents who use cannabis regularly earn lower grades, perform more poorly on IQ tests, and demonstrate lower cognitive function than peers who abstain.

Many short-term problems are associated with substance abuse in young people. Teenagers get less sleep, and sleep more poorly, when they are intoxicated, and being poorly rested may cause them to be less attentive in class and to operate with lower processing speed and working memory. Being under the influence of substances is also associated with poorer emotional regulation and risky decision-making.

But the UW review found that marijuana use presents more lasting dangers as well. Teenage brains exposed to marijuana may fail to develop properly. The damage was found to be particularly severe for teenagers who started younger or who used marijuana frequently. One longitudinal study revealed that young people who smoked marijuana on a regular basis during their teenage years lost an average of 8 IQ points as they transitioned from childhood to adulthood.

The teenage years are critical for brain development, and it seems that toxins in marijuana prevent the brain from doing the important work of pruning extraneous synapses and therefore working more efficiently.

It's important to keep in mind that the marijuana used by teens today differs from that which parents may have used in college. As noted by the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, the potency of marijuana today is two to seven times what it was in the 1970's, as measured by the levels of THC, the active ingredient responsible for marijuana's psychoactive, or mood altering, effects. In addition, "another difference between then and now is that marijuana users in the 1970's were most likely to smoke the leaves and initiate use around 20 years of age. Marijuana users today, however, start in their mid-teens and prefer to smoke the more potent flowering tops, (buds) of the plant." Parents need to be mindful of these facts as they speak to their teens about the long term impact of early marijuana use. 

Illustration: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Use Practice Tests to Prepare for Standardized Tests

Casey Konstantin

If you follow trends in education, chances are you've heard about the importance of practice tests. To sum it up: Exciting research about memory has indicated that the best way to learn something is to take practice tests instead of traditional studying. Many education-centered magazines, newspapers, and blogs have been reporting on this idea and, for related content, you can access other posts we've written about this subject:

• Studying for finals
• Using test taking as a study tool 
• Test taking tips from experts, and
• Effective studying techniques

Sometimes, this is easier said than done. Taking practice tests to prepare for run-of-the-mill, in-class exams--such as a biology midterm written by the teacher--can be tricky, since ready-made practice tests don’t typically exist for tests of this kind; in these cases, we encourage students to make their own practice tests. But students preparing for a standardized test can access pre-made tests through a variety of sources. In the old days, students bought books of practice tests from companies like Kaplan, Barron’s, and The College Board. But increasingly, practice tests are available online, often for free.

The quality of free online practice tests varies, but there are some gems out there. For example, The College Board website offers practice questions for the AP exams and practice questions and a full-length, online practice SAT test. Students preparing for the ACT will find The Princeton Review’s full-length practice test useful. And Varsity Tutors has recently launched a very good “one-stop-shop” practice testing site  with access to practice questions, questions of the day, and sample tests for a multitude of exams, including the SAT, ACT, GRE, GED, ISEE, SSAT, and AP. Many of the tests feature a useful content instruction option that explains how to find the answer to several practice questions and problems; students can start here, then move to the flashcards to practice. As an added bonus, it’s possible to create a free account that will track one’s progress through the content.

Some online practice tests include a timer function. While this is not essential, it can be very helpful as students get a sense of their work pace in anticipation of a timed exam. One feature that is essential, however, is access to thoughtful explanations for correct answers. It’s important that students know more than whether they were right or wrong, and good practice sites will explain why the right answer is the best choice. Very good sites will even explain why the wrong answers are incorrect, tempting though some of them may be.

To make the most out of practice tests, students should keep the following points in mind:

• Make sure the format of your practice test matches the format of the actual test. If you’ll be testing on paper, print out the practice test and take it with a pencil. Signed up for a computer-based test? Taking it on the screen is fine. 
• Take the test under time constraints – at some point. For students who are nervous testers or those first encountering the test format, it may be a good idea to start out with an untimed practice round to test the waters. Students should be sure to take the test at least once under the time constraints they’ll face on the actual test day, though; it’s important that they know whether their natural pace is appropriate, and working under simulated pressure will help them feel more comfortable when taking the real test.
• Make sure practice conditions match test conditions as closely as possible. Don’t curl up on the couch with a laptop to prepare for a computer-based test; sit at a table or desk in a quiet, distraction-free space instead. Have scratch paper ready if the test allows it. Don’t snack or drink while working. It’s important to gain familiarity with testing conditions, not just the test format and content.

Art to Support Learning

Students generally relish the chance to create art. They love the opportunity to express themselves and enjoy experimenting with different media. Fitting art into an already full school day, alas, can be a challenge. But according to Mariale Hardiman, co-founder and director of the Neuro-Education Initiative at Johns Hopkins’ School of Education, choosing between art and core instruction may not be necessary; it seems the two can support each other quite well. Her research has found that the use of arts in the classroom does more than make students happy: it can improve their retention of information.

LWT Gunnersbury Triangle

In a simple, elegant experiment, Hardiman compared groups of students who simply learned facts about history with groups who learned history with an art component. For example, students might draw a picture to illustrate historical events, put historical facts into songs, or write creatively about historical information. After learning, both groups of students were tested, and initially there weren't any differences between their scores. But when the students were tested again three months later, the arts group demonstrated much better retention than the control group.

We think incorporating the arts into learning wherever possible is a great idea, and not just because it seems to promote better memory for facts. Adding an art component to classroom work allows artistic kids to shine in a way that they sometimes can’t in a purely academic setting, building self-esteem. And, of course, art encourages children to be creative, flexible thinkers and to experiment with symbolism and abstract concepts.

Want to provide opportunities for your students to pair art with curriculum? Here are some ideas:


Creative Writing








Poetry

Ask students to write a poem about what they’re learning. Use models and get creative. Show kids some limericks and ask them to write their own about a character in a novel. Rewrite one of Shakespeare’s sonnets to become an ode to a plant cell, a planet, or the Constitution.

Letters

Challenge students to take on the role of a historical figure or a fictional character and ask them to write a letter (or an email) to another figure or character. This isn't a new idea, but it can become really fun when kids are given unexpected roles. A student could write a letter to a cloud from the perspective of a plant who is hungry and needs exposure to sunlight so it can use photosynthesis, for example. Students struggling with algebra? Have fun with tricky concepts such as like terms by asking students to write a love letter from the perspective of 2x explaining why s/he adores 5x but has no interest in mixing with 6y.

Short Stories

Creating fictionalized accounts can make academics come alive. Challenge kids to write a story about the experiences of an oxygen molecule who is breathed in, circulated through a body, then breathed out. Ask kids to imagine that they are Louis XIV’s footman or Genghis Khan’s horse. What would they hear and see in these roles?


Visual Art








Comic Strip

Ask students to tell a story (the plot of a novel, the series of events during an important time in history, the transition of water from a solid to a liquid to a gas) frame by frame.

Cause-Effect Panels

For students struggling with causes and effects, illustrating the relationship can be very helpful. Set the stage for cause-effect panels by asking students to fold a sheet of paper in half. On the left side, they can illustrate the cause, and on the right, they can draw the effect or effects. If a student is studying the effect of temperature changes on matter, for example, he can draw a picture of a thermometer with rising mercury on the left, and molecules bouncing into each other with frantic arrows between on the right. Sometimes, students may need to divide the right side of the paper to show several effects. For example, The Stamp Act caused the colonists to both boycott British goods and to form the Sons of Liberty, so a cause-effect panel illustrating that relationship would have two parts to its effect side. This activity can be enriched by assigning a short piece of writing to describe the cause-effect relationship shown, or by asking a student to explain their work orally.

Diagrams

Need to learn about the anatomy of the heart or the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns? Sometimes the best way to commit lots of small details to memory is to draw them. Ask students to draw and label their own diagrams showing the details of these complicated concepts. Color-coding can make diagrams even more valuable; perhaps students could color the pathways of blood into the heart in blue and the pathways out of the heart in red, or shade the columns’ similarities in yellow and their differences in green.


Performance Art








Music

Really talented musicians will love the opportunity to come up with their own songs about academic topics. For students who don’t play music or write songs, challenge them to rewrite songs they know so that they lyrics are about an academic topic they are studying, like the events in a novel, the Bill of Rights, or the order of operations.

Skits

Challenge kids to write and perform short skits that illustrate important events and concepts. Perhaps they could perform a short dialogue between nobles as they discuss the merits and potential risks of presenting King John with the Magna Carta. Have students act out word problems to help them visualize the situations being described. Assign students the roles of different elements and ask them to come up with a skit about what would happen if some of them ran into others at an element party or on a bus; what reactions would occur? What would passers-by notice?

Staged Debates

Comparing and contrasting the ideologies of historical figures, the concepts of different geometric shapes, or the arrangement of plant and animal cells? Give pairs of students opposing roles and ask them to generate some arguments about why their perspective is superior to that of their opponent. Costumes can bring this idea to life!

Icon credits: Itzik Gur (paint, music); Design Contest (pencil).

Memory Strategies: Use Music, Mnemonics, and YouTube to Improve Learning

A frequent issue mentioned by students who come to The Yellin Center for help with school is that they can’t remember information they studied when test time rolls around. They often suspect they have memory difficulties, but we frequently find that poor memory is not the problem. Even the strongest memories in the world can’t handle a limitless number of facts; these students are usually in need of better memory strategies. The more strategically they learn information, the easier it will be to “find” when taking exams.

Testing is particularly difficult for medical or law students, or even high school students in chemistry or history classes, because there is so much material to remember. We often recommend that students use mnemonics to help them recall lists of facts. For example, to remember the taxonomy for biology, if students can remember the sentence “King Philip Cuts Open Five Green Snakes,” they’ll have access to the first letter of each of the taxonomic levels in order (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).

Another way to recall information is to turn it into song lyrics to go with a catchy tune. We think this is a great idea, and we’re not the only ones. A recent news story tells of a young British doctor doing just that to help the staff at his hospital remember to use the asthma treatment guidelines when treating wheezing patients. When traditional reminders weren't working, Dr. Tapas Mukherjee made a YouTube video  in which he sang his new asthma-related lyrics to the tune of Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and crossed his fingers. Within two months, doctors at his hospital reported that they all knew the guidelines. More importantly, they performed much better on measures that tested their knowledge of specifics. For his efforts, Dr. Mukherjee won the British Thoracic Society Innovation in Education Award in 2012 and the National Health Service Expo/Network Casebook II Innovation Award this year.

There are plenty of other great examples of students using song to help get troublesome facts to stick. One is a video made by Canadian medical students. (Those unfamiliar with second-degree AV block, a disorder that causes irregular heartbeat, may find it a little tough to follow but will still get the idea). Another winner is “This is Why We Clot,” described on the page as “Drug Life’s hot new single about the use of anticoagulants.” To see a model of how this tactic could work with younger children, watch the silly “Place Value Song” from Teacher Tipster  below to see how Mr. Smith uses a song to help his youngsters learn how to grasp the concept of tens and ones.



The most memorable study song, of course, is the one a student invents himself. So next time your student has to learn a list of prepositions, recall a series of events, or perform a multi-step procedure, help him turn the information into a song. Teachers can try this out in the classroom by putting students in groups; finished songs can be recorded and played or performed live for the class. Turn studying into a rockin’ good time!

Free Back-to-School Workshops for Parents and Educators

The Yellin Center for Mind, Brain, and Education will present a series of free back-to-school workshops for parents and educators at our Center on West 29th Street in Manhattan in the coming weeks.

Jeremy Koren

First up: on Tuesday, September 24, Paul B. Yellin, MD, FAAP,, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine and Director of The Yellin Center will discuss ADHD, Attention, and Learning. Special emphasis will be placed on the topics of common symptoms, the process of diagnosis (and what labels like "ADHD" really mean), some recommended treatments, and how to deploy individualized strategies to best support weak attention and executive-function controls in learners at every grade level, from elementary school through college.

On the following evening,Wednesday, September 25, Susan Yellin, Esq. will present College 101: What Students with Learning Issues (and Their Parents) Should Know. Mrs. Yellin will focus on matters of import to students and parents who are in various stages of the process of transitioning from high school to the more independent setting associated with colleges and universities, including admissions, student support services, choosing a school, SAT/ACT testing issues, disability disclosure considerations, and more. Parents of students from middle school through 12th grade should find this presentation highly informative.

Finally, on Thursday, October 17, Dr. Yellin will present a special discussion on Memory and Learning. In this conversation, Dr. Yellin will aim to provide parents with a new understanding of how variation in the brain functions which control memory can impact a student's performance in school.

All of these events are free, but advance registration is required and space will be limited. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.. Events will begin promptly at 5 p.m. and conclude by 6 p.m. each night.

Register online here, or call The Yellin Center at (646) 775-6646. Please tell a friend to join you! We hope to see you there.

Download printable fliers for the events here and tack them up on your local community or school bulletin board.


-Jeremy Koren

Memory Training Programs Fail Researchers' Review

In recent years, we have seen the rapid proliferation of “brain training” and "memory training" programs that purport to build working memory (mentally suspending information while using or manipulating it), treat attention deficit disorder and learning differences, and generally improve cognitive function in children and adults. We have been reluctant to recommend these programs because they tend to be expensive and time-consuming while the long term benefits are unclear. When asked why we don’t recommend these programs, I frequently respond that the idea that exercising an isolated brain function will improve your academic performance makes as much sense as thinking that arm exercises will make you a better tennis player.  

Research demonstrating that these brain training programs are beneficial may sound convincing. After all, we do know that we are constantly making new brain cells and re-wiring our brains. We know that working memory, which is often compared to a computer’s RAM, is an important brain function that plays a major role in many important activities. We also know that these programs do lead to short-term improvements in performance on working memory tests.  

However, what has not been clear among all of the hype surrounding these commercial programs are the answers to two critical questions:

•  Do these improvements persist over time?         
•  Does the improved performance on working memory tests translate to improved performance in school?

An article recently released on-line and about to be published in the journal Developmental Psychology answers both questions in the negative. In the article, Drs. Monica Melby-Lervag and Charles Hulme report on their meta-analysis of 23 different studies. Their conclusions:

  

• “Memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize”
• “Current findings cast doubt on both the clinical relevance of working memory training programs and their utility as methods of enhancing cognitive functioning in typically developing children and healthy adults”

On the other hand, activities that build mastery in meaningful activities, enhance self-esteem, and support the development of healthy relationships are “brain building exercises” that have been well documented to produce long-term benefits that extend beyond the task at hand.

Photo by Likethegrandcanyon used via Flickr Creative Commons

An Award-Winning Memory

Joshua Foer

In 2005 journalist Joshua Foer covered the U.S.A. Memory Championships for a story. He was fascinated by the event, which challenges competitors to push their memories to the limit by recalling decks of cards in sequence, a previously unpublished poem, long lists of numbers, or fictitious first and last names associated with photographs of various people. The more Foer saw, the more he was fascinated by the competitors' apparently limitless capacities for holding information. He began to study memory and to do his own experiments. A year later, he returned to the Championships, this time as a competitor. Not only did he win, but he set a new record in the "speed cards" event by memorizing an entire deck of cards in only one minute and forty seconds.

Foer describes how he accomplished this feat in an intriguing TED talk. TED is a nonprofit whose mission is to bring together individuals from the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design to share what they know at conferences and via "talks" on their website, among other means. Foer swears that he does not have a particularly great memory. Anyone, he says in his talk, can accomplish this sort of thing.  

Foer was able to learn all the cards because he had dedicated time and energy to assigning each card a celebrity match and memorizing them. For example, the six of hearts might be Britney Spears, the jack of diamonds might be Mickey Rooney, etc. He made sure to select celebrities that were meaningful to him and whom he could clearly visualize; for example, famous as author Mary Shelley may be, it's hard to picture her. Then he practiced by going through a decks of cards, imagining very vivid scenarios in which he walked through his house and encountered each of the characters in the order that their cards were drawn from the deck. When the cards were taken away he simply replayed the scenario in his head and was able to "see" each of the celebrities and associate each with their card.

While this particular situation is not one we encounter often at The Yellin Center, Foer's message about memory echoes advice we often give students: To remember something, one has to figure out a way to convert the information into another format that will make it meaningful. For example, to remember information about the Battle of Gettysburg for a test, a student could draw the battle, representing the different battalions and their actions throughout the conflict. The student could act it out with friends or with Lego people. The student could picture the battle vivdly in his/her head, or find a documentary or a narrative account of the battle. It may also be valuable to compare and contrast the Battle of Gettysburg with something the student knows well, ranging from another battle to a football game.

Memory strategies are generally not one-size-fits-all, meaning that learners will have to experiment to figure out which kinds of transformations will make the information meaningful, and therefore memorable, to them. But as Foer, the journalist turned memory champion, demonstrates, seemingly superhuman feats of memory are not as superhuman as they seem.

Photo credit: Dmadeo via Wikimedia Commons

Vocabulary Knowledge Scale

Memory is a strange animal indeed. Recent research suggests that people have difficulty differentiating between what they know and what is familiar to them unless they are specifically prompted to do so. Dr. Yellin likes to share a story about a conference about memory he attended in which the lecturer asked the attendees how many of them knew how a toilet worked. Most of the hands in the room went up. The lecturer then asked how many of them could explain it step by step. Nearly every hand went down. This is the difference between familiarity and mastery: Just because our memories have encountered a concept before does not mean that we understand it thoroughly.

The first step in transitioning from a recognizer to a master of a concept is to determine where the gaps are, and sometimes that realization takes some outside prompting. This issue is particularly prevalent in the issue of vocabulary. Many students will say that they know a word’s meaning only to be unable to define it when asked. Chances are they’re not being cheeky; their brains are just confusing familiarity with mastery. To help students combat this, a vocabulary scale can be a great tool. 

The scale is made up of four levels:

Level 1 – I can define that word and use it in a sentence.

Level 2 – I’ve heard that word before and know the gist of it. I may be able to give you some examples or use it in a sentence, but I can’t come up with a solid definition.

Level 3 – I’ve heard that word before, but I have no idea what it means.

Level 4 – Huh? I’ve never heard or seen that word.

If an adult working or talking with a student suspects that a student does not know a word, s/he should ask the student to determine which level the word is for them using the scale. Sometimes, simply discussing a Level 2 word is enough to help students construct a definition for it. Words from Level 3 and 4 should be taken in context, and preferably in the context of other sentences as well, deconstructed, and looked up.

The vocabulary scale is not intended to instruct students in vocabulary, per se. It can, however, make students more self-aware of their levels of word knowledge, making it even more powerful than any curriculum.

Photo: Horia Varlan/Flickr Creative Commons

The Role of Memory in Decision Making

We've all heard the expression "learning by doing." But just how does having done or experienced something in the past actually help shape our decisions and behaviors later? 

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have looked at brain processes in rats to better understand how humans build on their past experiences in making new decisions. Dr. Loren Frank and his team blocked the neural pathways -- split-second electrical bursts in the memory areas of the brain -- that enabled the animals to "replay" their past experiences learning their way through a particular maze. Earlier studies had suggested the role of mentally reliving past experiences as key factor in making new decisions, such as how to approach a new maze configuration. But it was necessary to isolate this brain function to understand its importance to learning and decision making. When this function was blocked, the rats were unable to link their previous experience with the maze to their current situation and their performance in the maze deteriorated. 

“It appears to be these ripple-like bursts in electrical activity in the hippocampus that enable us to think about future possibilities based on past experiences and decide what to do,” Dr. Frank stated to the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which helped to fund the research. "Similar patterns of hippocampus activity have been detected in humans during similar situations.” This "awake mental replay" is related to the way that sleep helps to consolidate memories in humans and is also related to day-dreaming. It seems even when we think we are disengaged, our brain is busily at work, consolidating what we have learned and readying us to apply it to a new situation.

Image: Derivative work: Looie496 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Test-Taking Tips From The Experts

Because of the nature of memory, we often tell students that the best way to study for a test is to take practice tests. Research indicates that rereading study material, the method preferred by most people, is less effective than taking practice tests for two reasons: First, our brains have difficulty distinguishing between material with which we are familiar and material which we truly understand. Students may stop studying too early because they recall seeing information before, only to realize during the test that they didn’t actually understand it. Second, answering practice questions gives the brain practice at retrieving information from long-term memory, the process a student undergoes during actual testing. Students who have the opportunity to rehearse “finding” answers are more prepared to do this quickly and easily on test day.

An article in The Wall Street Journal from earlier this week covers this principle and offers other testing tips derived from a number of studies on learning. For example, nearly everybody knows that eating a nutritious breakfast on test day is important, but a recent experiment demonstrated that consumption of a nutritious diet should start a week before the test date for optimum results. The article also discusses how to balance sleeping and studying, and offers tips to help combat test anxiety. 

Students gearing up for the first round of mid-terms can access the full article here.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Steven S.

New Video Clips of Dr. Yellin

We're excited to share some new footage of Dr. Yellin speaking on a range of topics from a recent lecture. Stay tuned to this blog and to The Yellin Center's new YouTube channel for much more video to come in the future.

Research Roundup

Scientists at the Kennedy Krieger Institute have found that children with math difficulties may lack an intuitive number sense. (Kennedy Krieger Institute)

Educators have long observed that studying over an extended period is more effective than "cramming" to learn material. Scientists in Japan have described the neurological processes that make this so. (Riken Brain Science Institute)


A new study suggests that when individuals are already engaged in active learning or thinking, they perform better on tests of memory. (Science Daily)


New York has released dismal data about the college readiness of graduating high school students throughout the state. (New York Times)


Scientists are getting closer to understanding why self-testing improves memory, especially when students select the correct answer. (Science Daily)

Cool Tools: Connecting Written Text to Recorded Audio

The New York Times recently picked up on an inspired piece of educational gadgetry which we have been recommending to many students and young professionals in our practice for quite some time.  The “smartpen,” manufactured and marketed by Livescribe in a couple of iterations, with varying features and price points, is a spectacularly handy device for note-taking in a lecture situation. It also has myriad additional uses, such as quick translation and mathematical-calculation applications built-in, and would be a useful tool in the arsenal of any business person or student who could benefit from a little support of their memory and materials-organization skills.

The current models, called “Echo” or “Pulse,” are affordably priced gadgets which essentially combine two age-old note-taking devices – the simple pen and the voice recorder – into one compact tool with intertwined functionality. The pen records lectures while you take notes as you would with an ordinary pen. It uses a proprietary notebook (a small one is included, additional books are sold separately, and the Times article implies that a “DIY” solution to creating your own coordinating paper is possible) to link the playback of your recordings with the written text you have entered while listening. Later, when studying your notes, a tap of the pen (it has a built-in sensor/stylus) can transport you back into the lecture hall by accessing the specific moment of the lecture that was being recorded while you jotted down your notes. Software (no additional charge) for your desktop or laptop computer can help you organize, access, and share your recordings. The pen and notebook system can even recognize drawings or mathematical equations that you sketch while listening.

For students with weak memory, attention, and organizational skills, the Livescribe pens can be a huge help and yield important benefits in the studying process. We have seen high-school students, college and post-graduate students, and even resident-level doctors praise the effectiveness of these sleek devices. The pens hold battery charge for a long time and are ergonomically designed, appearing no larger than a permanent marker. The bulkier size of the pen (when compared to a traditional pen) may even be a plus to some students who struggle with fine-motor issues. It charges simply via USB connection to your computer, and holds a large amount of audio recordings (variable by model and price); of course, you can upload your recordings to your computer via the supplied software, effectively allowing for infinite storage capacity of your recordings.

As with any new technology, there are certainly kinks to be worked out; for one, the pen doesn’t always trigger playback as instantaneously as you would like – sometimes you’ll have to peck intently to initiate playback. Another potential hazard is one that is not unique to the smartpen device but certainly symptomatic of much of the gadgetry of our time – the ubiquity of recording devices everywhere you turn. Whether you are a high-school student using the smartpen in class or a businessperson using the device to backup your notes on an important meeting, you will want to ensure that audio recording is acceptable in the specific situation in which you wish to use the device. Some schools and professors may not allow audio recording in their classrooms, so be certain to check with administrators prior to investing in this or any similar recording device (for example, any Mac computer or iPhone comes equipped with audio recording technology – although these devices lack the sensational cross-functionality that is built into the Livescribe pens). Also, looking into the future, it’s easy to imagine how the addition of speech-recognition software (such as the much more expensive but equally useful Dragon software from Nuance – to be discussed in a future post) to the mix would enhance the functionality of the device.

All things considered, we’ve found the Livescribe smartpens to be incredibly useful tools to help create important linkages between the spoken word and written text. Starting at just above $125 and available both online and in big-box electronic retailers, the smartpens should be fairly easy to obtain for many families.

-Jeremy Koren

On Science and Good Study Habits

Benedict Carey’s September 6 New York Times article, “Forget What You Know about Good Study Habits,” discusses one of our favorite topics – the practical application of the latest scientific findings about how the mind works to educational strategies. Carey examines recent research in the emerging field of Mind, Brain, and Education and highlights some important and useful conclusions. 

As we learn more about how we store and access information in our minds, we are identifying more and more effective strategies for learning and studying. Recently, a parent told us their son takes a “Drill and Kill” approach to studying. What he meant was that his son repeatedly re-read and re-wrote the same material over and over again. As the Times’ article points out, rather than relying on rote memory, learning is most effective when we use active study strategies, such as those identified in this article: studying in more than one place, studying a range of related material at once, spacing study sessions, and including self-testing as a study strategy. Rather than treating our minds like a suitcase, into which we stuff as much material as we can, we need to be strategic in how and what we store, so we can find it when we need it. 


(Photo by Sue Clark)

Our Amazing Brain

We keep a large glass bowl of brains in our office -- the squeezable plastic kind, which we give to the younger students we see. They come in all sorts of bright colors and children always seem very pleased to receive a brain at the end of the day. They like to toss them and to show us how flexible they are.

An article in last week's New York Times reminded us that it is not just toy brains that are flexible. It told the story of a man named Henry Molaison, known only as H.M. during his lifetime. Mr. Molaison had surgery in 1953 to attempt to control severe seizures. Doctors removed two small sections of his brain, and although the procedure was successful in controlling his seizures, it destroyed his ability to form new memories. Now, a year after his death at age 82, doctors are beginning an examination of his brain, not so much to see what was destroyed, but to examine something that became evident as doctors worked with Mr. Molaison over the decades after his surgery -- the emergence of new pathways that seemed to enable him to form different kinds of memories, those for tasks rather than for facts and events.

We see the wonderful flexibility of the human brain in many ways. We know that many young people who exhibit poor judgment and impulsivity in adolesence go on to be thoughtful, acomplished adults after their brain finishes fully developing in their twenties. We know that appropriate reading interventions can change the brains of students with dyslexia and other reading disorders in ways that can be documented by scientists.
We have learned about studies of individuals with damage to one area of their brain who develop new pathways to enable them to perform functions they might otherwise have lost. Those who have seen Dr. Yellin speak about resilience and neuroplasticity have heard of how young people can overcome significant obstacles to emerge as competent and happy adults.

People like Mr. Molaison remind us how inappropriate it is to label people by the deficits that they have to be contending with at any point in time. There is good reason to expect that every struggling student has the real potential for success in their studies and their lives.