why does writing help memory

why does writing help memory

The Benefits of Writing for Memory Enhancement

1. Introduction

Why it is possible to improve memory: If you were to ask a random person on the street whether or not memory can be improved, most would probably say no. The common belief is that memory is a thing, like your height, that you cannot change. This, however, is entirely false! Memory is not so much a “thing” as it is a process. The following paragraph is the very first step in improving your memory. Understanding that your memory can be improved and that it is not a thing is the very foundation to the improvement of your memory. Unsatisfactory memory performance is not because your memory is “bad”, but rather because you have not learned how to use your memory effectively. People who have good memories do not have some natural gift, but rather have learned and practiced specific techniques for remembering. Anyone who takes the time to learn these techniques will improve their ability to remember. This guide teaches you these techniques that will enable you to remember more easily and for longer periods of time. With the use of these techniques, you can stop using the excuse of having a bad memory.

Chances are, several of the above questions apply to you. All of us find our memory to be a crucial part of who we are. Without our memory, we would have nothing. Who are we, what are we doing, and why are we doing it? These are all questions that are defined by our memories. Whether you are a student studying for a test, a professional trying to further your career, or an elder who is experiencing the first signs of aging, memory is relevant to getting the most out of what you are trying to do. This guide is designed to help your memory in a number of different areas. Whether you want to improve your memory to perform better at school, to learn more effectively in daily life, or simply to remember things more clearly, this guide will take you step by step through a process that can change your memory and your life.

Welcome to Memory Improvement Secrets, the online guide designed to help you improve your memory. This guide will teach you how to improve your memory. Among the many reasons for wanting to improve memory, which one applies to you? Are you having trouble recalling where you placed things? Are you constantly forgetting to do things? Do you ever go to another room to get something and when you get there, can’t remember what you were looking for? Do you frequently have to search for your car keys or eyeglasses? Do you often miss appointments because you forgot about them? Are you fed up with having information “at the tip of your tongue,” knowing that if you could just remember that person’s name or what he or she looks like, you could remember so much more about them? Do you have a test coming up and you can’t remember anything you studied? Have you become so frustrated with your memory that you have simply accepted the fact that it can’t be improved, all the while wishing that wasn’t the case? Do you have a good memory that you want to keep sharp?

2. How Writing Stimulates Memory

This is because in CTW, the problem-solving transitions in between the generative and evaluation phases are actions. Goals can only be changed during these transitions, so it is better to keep the same sentences unless they serve as a marker that an action goal was supposed to be carried out. Sentence generation and maintenance are therefore the heart of writing.

Revisiting this definition of problem solving, I can now reinterpret the question “How do they write quickly?” as “How do they generate and execute plans to achieve their goals?” This leads me to the theory that the key to writing fluently is having a well-organized series of lower-level plans that are generated by a global higher-level plan with minimal need to stop and revise goals. These plans are translated into text when activation of the appropriate information in the long-term memory and the generation of new sentences coincide with the sentence being in the focus of attention.

While problem solving is a capacious term, it is defined here as searching for a way out of a present situation which is perceived as difficult or obstructive and going to a new situation which is perceived as better. By this definition, writing is a problem-solving activity in which writers generate, plan, and revise text to achieve their own goals across multiple genres and styles.

Cognitive process theory of writing and its emphasis on the role of problem solving has implications for discovering how to enhance writing and memory that are specific and interesting. This work to date, many of its practitioners, including Hayes and Flower themselves, have chosen to study writing from a problem-solving perspective with a focus on content generation during text production. No surprise given their early collaborations at Bell Labs during the late 1970s and 1980s.

What happens in the minds of experienced writers on a nonconscious level? How do they produce a constant stream of ideas, words, and sentences? How do they write quickly and seemingly effortlessly when most people find writing very difficult? These are perennial questions in the field of writing studies that have been addressed by cognitive psychologists working within the framework of a three-decade long tradition of research known as Hayes and Flower’s cognitive process theory of writing.

3. The Role of Reflection in Memory Improvement

There’s a lot of research that shows reflection is a very good tool to solve the problem and increase learning. What happens in reflection is that people try to retrieve the information and try to make a meaningful sequence of the events occurred, why it happened, and what the impact of the event. This process will help the frontal lobes to integrate and coordinate information to the similar existing cognitive structure, and restructure of faulty cognitive will occur. This process will help the new schema formation and increase the ability to interrelate an event with the other event.

One of the best ways to capture the experience is by doing reflection. Reflection is a form of mental rehearsal and review of what has occurred to a less automatic and more meaningful level. According to Dewey, reflection involves a kind of internal give and take between the before and after of an experience. Others also define that reflection is the intentional attempt to recall to mind a house to something knowing or experience it with a view to attending to discovering its meaning and apply the learning into the future.

Before, when people left from experience, they would just go out from their experience without capturing what they have learned from there. They might change the surroundings, go to another place, but they will not change themselves. The failure then makes them feel frustrated, and they repeat the similar choices with greater pressures. That happens because they do not capture what they have learned from the previous experience.

4. Techniques for Effective Writing to Enhance Memory

Pattern reduction It is found that varying the number of scripts enhances memory formation. This discovery suggests that variations on familiar tasks requiring problem-solving and the ability to infer new rules facilitate memory. Writing stories is an effective way to enhance memory. One should first decide the topic and message of the story and then write a brief outline including when and where the story takes place, the plot, and what occurs in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Then when writing the whole story, one can consult the outline with the goal of including as much detail as possible. After story reconstruction, the story should be rewritten on different occasions to vary the memory representation produced by the same story. The production of mental imagery and writing to generate in-depth processing on a task are also found to enhance memory. This can be done by writing about persons or places from the past or a hypothetical situation. The reason why imagined or real past events are easier to understand than an abstract or unusual passage resulting in better memory is because they can be related to a person’s previous experiences. Writing about the past and relating information to oneself are just defined ways to generate in-depth processing, a deeper understanding of an event or passage, and are both strategies intended to enhance memory.

5. Conclusion

Using writing as a method to improve memory is an easy and exceptional strategy to consider. Writing has been an outlet for generation after generation, and research has proven that writing is an effective tool for memory enhancement. The basis for writing as an effective tool “lies in the ability of writing to off-load information from limited-capacity verbal memory stores into more durable forms of external storage”. The ability to store information externally is a huge advantage in the case of memory retention. External storage in terms of writing is being able to jot down memories, thoughts, and feelings. With memory loss being a consequence not only of old age, but also of focusing too much on a subject, it’s a pressing issue for many students. Seniors who took a writing class improved their memories and feelings of well-being more than comparison groups, according to a study. “When you are learning something new, you are changing the brain,” notes Dr. Gene Cohen, Director of the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities at George Washington University. “For many older learners, that can be an opportunity for cognitive growth and expansion.” The ability to off-load information allows the brain not to have to tack on so much information in order to keep it. This is especially useful when it comes to remembering facts and figures. With external storage, say for example notes for a class, freeing up the capacity of verbal memory stores and the ability to increase the depth of processing, notes can be taken on what needs to be remembered, and learning the information can be done more thoroughly, increasing the probability of the information being transferred into long-term memory.