Process Essay: Improving Memory

Throughout our lives, many of us have struggled to remember events in our lives, the names of people we know, and even their faces. Everyone seems to believe that they have the best memory, when in fact, our memories fail us more than we’d care to admit. But over time, with more and more knowledge about what memory is and how it works, psychologists have discovered how we can improve it. But to understand how to improve our memory, we must first learn how it all works. In Laura King’s The Science of Psychology (3rd edition), memory is defined as “the retention of information or experience over time.” In memory, there are three different processes that occur to hold this information: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is however the information gets into memory storage; while storage is the preservation of this information over time and how it is shown in memory. Retrieval is putting that information to use by pulling it out of storage to recollect the information. For example, if we are listening to a lecture, this is encoding. If we are writing notes or rehearsing the information in our heads, it goes into storage. Retrieval would take place when using the learned information on a test or in a conversation. Now that we understand what memory is and have an idea of how it works, the next step is to understand how we process it all. Our brains, although incredible, could not possibly hold all of the information that it receives. Because of this, our brains will file and store the information that it thinks is important. …show more content…
Now, in improving our memory, we need to dedicate ourselves to really focusing and investing ourselves into events throughout the day to preserve the information we want embedded into our minds. Although there are many aspects to improving our memory, with practice you are guaranteed to see a difference. Now, where were