STUDYING TO REMEMBER
Memory

Memory is not a videotape record of events. Instead, it is a complex cognitive or mental process involving the perception and encoding of the to-be-remembered information, the storage of what is to be remembered, and the retrieval of the stored information. Memory is a systematic method of recording and retrieving information whenever we need. Memory is a process whereby what is experienced or learned is established as a record in the central nervous system (registration), where it persists with a variable degree of permanence (retention) and can be recollected or retrieved from storage at will (recall). Memory is like muscle. It increases through regular practice and diminishes when it's not in use. There are no such things like good and bad memory only trained and untrained memory.Memory doesn't work without good understanding. Awareness is prerequisite. Understanding is very important. Memory is a method of recording what we have already understood and it is a process of retrieving of the things understood. 
Learning

Learning is any relatively permanent permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a result of practice or experience.

Intelligence

There are probably as many definitions of intelligence as there are experts who study it. Simply put, however, intelligence is the ability to learn about, learn from, understand, and interact with one’s environment. It is a capacity for learning and ability to recall, integrate constructively, and apply what one has learned; the capacity to understand and think rationally. This general ability consists of a number of specific abilities, which include:

Adaptability to a new environment or to changes in the current environment
Capacity for knowledge and the ability to acquire it
Capacity for reason and abstract thought
Ability to comprehend relationships
Ability to evaluate and judge
Capacity for original and productive thought 
 
 Mnemonics

This strange –looking word (pronounced “nemoniks”) comes from Greek word for “memory” and refers to specific memory-improvement techniques. Mnemonics are fun to use and can be helpful in remembering many things. But if you want to remember what you need to know in courses or in your work, you will need to go beyond mnemonic techniques. Here are some hints on how to remember what you study.

Key words in the process of studying to remember:

Planning
Rehearsal
Organization
Feedback
Review
Overlearning
 

First study is work and takes time, so plan a study schedule that you can stick to. During the time you set aside for study, work at it instead of talking to friends or watching television out of the corner of your eye. (If you study hard during your scheduled times, you will find that you have plenty of time for your friends and television later.)

Second, we know that rehearsal is crucial for transferring information from short-term to long-term memory or, alternatively, for the deeper and richer processing of information that is necessary for good memory. Textbooks are full of detailed information, most of which cannot be remembered from the kind of speed reading that we give to a newspaper. Maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal are essential.Maintenance rehearsal consists of thinking about what is being rehearsed in an effort to relate it to other thing that you know or are learning. Elaborative rehearsal is the kind to use in elaborative rehearsal: Ask yourself what you have just read, what the new concepts and terms are, and how they relate to other things you know or are learning. Studies show that it is effective to spend at least half of your study time in such rehearsal.

Third, remember the importance of organization during encoding. Organization takes many forms. Text-books are organized by headings to provide a kind of outline. As you rehearse elaboratively, you will be giving your own subjective organization to the material, and you will also be providing yourself with retrieval cues, or reminders, that will be important when you try to recall what you are learning. If you can, form visual images of abstract ideas.

Forth, try to get some idea of how well you remember the material.

In other words, get some feed back. If you study by breaking the material up into parts, try to get some feed back after you study each part .Go back over what you have just studied and, using the headings as retrieval cues, ask yourself what is under each heading .Turn to the terms at the end of the chapter and ask yourself for definitions of the appropriate terms. Feed back will tell you both what you have mastered and where you are weak .When

you have finished a chapter, test yourself on it, and do some additional work on any weak spots. By testing yourself, you will also be practicing your retrieval skills.

Fifth, review before an examination. You will have forgotten many of the details you learned. Use the organization of the text to test yourself during review, and go back over the things you have forgotten, relearning them the way you learned them in the first place. Key your review to the type of examination. If the examination will be stressing recall, as in an essay examination, spend a good deal of your time rehearsing major ideas and the experiments that support them.Trying to think of what the questions will be ahead of time and practicing your answers to them is often a good idea. Spend some time integrating the text with class notes and trying to get a ”big picture” of the subject–how it relates to other  topic in the course, for example. If the examination is to be multiple-choice, or some other objective type of test, be sure you have mastered the definitions of the terms and can recognize the correct definitions when you see them. Of course, knowledge of terms is necessary for good performance on essay examination too, and concepts are often asked for on multiple-choice examination. So do not neglect terms or ideas for any examination; just give a little more emphasis, depending on the type of examination, to one or the other.

Planning, rehearsal, organization, feed back, and review will see you through course examinations, but, as you well know, most of what you remembered for an examination will be forgotten, or at least hard to retrieve, when you need to recall it later for another course or for your work. Here the old adage ‘practice makes perfect’ is applicable. Psychologists use the word overlearning. To remember what you will need in your work, for example, it pays to go beyond the effort needed to just learn the material. After you are satisfied that you know and can remember some-thing, go back after a few days and learn it again and perhaps again. Formal studies have shown that such “over learning” works to reduce the amount forgotten. For instance, if it takes you 2 hours to learn how to work with arrays in a programming language, another 2 hours spent ‘overlearning’ the same material will stamp it into memory. Most of the time we are not motivated strongly enough to do what seems like extra work, but fortunately, for things we really need to remember, we will get many opportunities for ‘overlearning’ in advanced courses or on the job. 

(Writer Dr. Nirmal Lamichhane, MBBS, MD (Neuropsychiatry) works in Western Regional Hospital, Pokhara and Fishtail Hospital and Research Centre, Pokhara)
Correspondence: Dr. Nirmal Lamichhane
E-mail: drnrmlam@yahoo.com 
 References

Morgan C.T, King R. A., Weisz J.R. and Schopler J. Introduction to Psychology (7th ed). Tata McGraw-Hill Edition; 1986.
Sadock B. J and Sadock V. A (eds). Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry (8th ed).New York: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; 2005.