Here's How to Improve Your Memory With One Weird Trick

The older we get, the harder it can be to keep our memories sharp, but there is a weird trick that [...]

The older we get, the harder it can be to keep our memories sharp, but there is a weird trick that can help you to improve your memory function.

Dubbed the "production effect" by Colin MacLeod, the University of Waterloo psychology professor who discovered it, the trick is essentially to read or say out loud whatever it is you want to remember.

There is, however, much more scientific date to support it's effectiveness, as studies were also done on the effectiveness of typing words and simply mouthing words, which revealed that those things do help retain information better than being silent, but still not as well as reading/speaking aloud.

"I think that leads to better initial encoding of the information in memory," MacLeod explained."But it's particularly useful at the time of test when you try to retrieve stuff from memory."

According to CBC News, MacLeod and his research team studied the effects of how students retained information based on reading silently, reading out loud, hearing others reading, and hearing a recording of themselves reading.

"Silent was the worst," MacLeod added. "It's a little better to hear someone else's voice. It's better still to hear your own voice, but it's best to produce [the word] yourself and both hear your own voice and move your own mouth."

MacLeod did follow up by saying that it's "good" to pick out "the important stuff" if you're using this trick to study for a test, as it works better with specific information rather than a lengthy text.

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