Societal structures and memory organization models share network-like features, offering insights into how information spreads and shapes collective memories. In this study, we manipulated the structure of lab-created community networks during a computer-mediated recall task using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm to test the spreading…

From the earliest moments in their lives, infants begin to build memories about their past and accumulate knowledge about the world. In this article, we focus on the distinction between memory for "specific" events and memory for "general" information, and the ongoing debate about which type of memory provides the foundation…

It is said that our species use mnemonics -- that "magic of memorization" -- to engrave an enormous amount of information in the brain. Yet, it is unclear how mnemonics affect memory and what the neural underpinnings are. In this electroencephalography study, we examined the hypotheses whether mnemonic training improved…

The various ways in which forgetting, an inherent component of the human memory process, occurs are essential for understanding cognitive function and memory control. This paper investigates the main categories of forgetting, including retrieval failure, decay, interference, motivated or conscious forgetting, and encoding failures. Retrieval…

Disfluencies such as pauses, "um"s, and "uh"s are common interruptions in the speech stream. Previous work probing memory for disfluent speech shows memory benefits for disfluent compared to fluent materials. Complementary evidence from studies of language production and comprehension have been argued to show that different…

While our perceptual experience seems to unfold continuously over time, episodic memory preserves distinct events for storage and recollection. Previous work shows that stability in encoding context serves to temporally bind individual items into sequential composite events. This phenomenon has been almost exclusively studied using visual and…

Childhood is a period when memory consolidation and knowledge base undergo rapid changes. The present study examined short-delay (overnight) and long-delay (after a 2-week period) consolidation of new information either congruent or incongruent with prior knowledge in typically developing 6- to 8-year-old children (n = 32), 9- to 11-year-old…

In this single-case study, we evaluated the effects of PESTS, a simple mnemonic strategy to help students remember how to spell difficult words. Our participant was a 9;6-year-old girl with a suspected learning disability in reading and writing. We applied a multiple-baseline design across word sets with one follow-up measurement two weeks after…

Teachers from all grade levels and subjects are continuously seeking effective instructional strategies to help students learn. Mnemonics represent a diverse set of research-based methods that help students remember primarily factual information. Teachers can infuse various types of mnemonics within their instruction to support student learning.…

Psychologist Pooja Agarwal, who has researched how various brain-based strategies to improve learning work in actual classrooms, describes the strong effects of "retrieval practice"--the practice of encouraging students to retrieve and "pull out" information they have learned from memory. Check out these powerful strategies.

Memory palaces are effective tools for learning vast amounts of information in a canonical order using mnemonics. However, our review of the literature revealed a lack of implementation and user study of memory palace in Virtual Reality (VR) for neuroscience education. VR technology enables us to build highly interactive virtual learning spaces…

This article explores the use of an interactive mnemonic device called a "Map of Memories" to navigate the museum theater production "Our Footprints," staged in 2017 in the Bergtheil Museum in Durban, South Africa. The Map is an interactive tool used by audience members to explore the exhibits and the performance through…

Well-structured knowledge allows us to quickly understand the world around us and make informed decisions to adequately control behavior. Knowledge structures, or schemas, are presumed to aid memory encoding and consolidation of new experiences so we cannot only remember the past, but also guide behavior in the present and predict the future.…

Retrieval practice has generally been shown to be an effective study strategy. The benefits of retrieval practice, however, have largely been compared to restudying, a passive and ineffective study strategy. Here, I investigated the memory and metamemory effects of practicing retrieval versus generating mnemonics, an active and effective study…

When our experience violates our predictions, it is adaptive to update our knowledge to promote a more accurate representation of the world and facilitate future predictions. Theoretical models propose that these mnemonic prediction errors should be encoded into a distinct memory trace to prevent interference with previous, conflicting memories.…