The issue of memory has always been interesting for people. It has been investigated from different perspectives and with different aims. Conclusions of these investigations were different, however, there is no use denying the fact that this field of knowledge is of a great importance. Functions and peculiarities of the process of memorizing are not studied yet and have a lot of secrets.. That is why, investigation of this process is a very important issue.
Great number of different investigations were made in order to discover main aspects of memory and understand what factors influence the process of memorizing. The aim of this work is to determine how the use of mnemonics techniques can influence memorization. Basing on previous researches, this one is, however, different, as it tries to combine ideas obtained and determine a role of some special techniques. This field is of a great interest for many different researchers. Klaus Oberauer in his article Access to Information in Working Memory: Exploring the Focus of Attention starts the investigation of the main processes of memorizing. In the chain of experiments, he examines working memory (Oberauer, 2002).
Having carried out two experiments, Oberauer comes to the conclusion that information in working memory is highly organized and has its own structure and understanding of this structure can help to improve the work of the human brain and memory in the whole. Investigation of the mechanisms of memorizing continued Veronika Coltheart, Stephen Mondy, Paul E. Dux and Lisa Stephenson. In their work Effects of Orthographic and Phonological Word Length on Memory for Lists Shown at RSVP and STM Rates they investigate effects of orthographic and phonological word length on memory (Coltheart, Mondy, Dux & Stephenson, 2004).
To understand this influence, three experiments were carried out. Results of these experiments showed, that there are two length effects peculiar for our memory which are based on orthographic and phonological length. (Coltheart et al., 2004). Further investigations of this sphere are connected with the attempt to examine the influence of a Hebb repetition effect. The chain of 5 experiments were carried out and described by Mike P. A. Page, Nick Cumming, Dennis Norris, Graham J. Hitch and Alan M. McNeil in their work Repetition Learning in the Immediate Serial Recall of Visual and Auditory Materials. All five experiments were successful and managed to prove that Hebb repetition effect influences the process of memorization. Moreover, it is possible to observe the learning of repeating lists regardless of whether phonological coding was evident (Cumming, Pag, Hitch, & McNeil, 2006).
Being an important step in understanding of some mechanisms of the work of our memory, this work gives some new ideas for researchers. However, investigations of this issue continued and Jesse Sargent, Stephen Dopkins, John Philbeck and David Chichka undertook another study called Chunking in Spatial Memory. The main aim of this research is to understand the nature of human spatial representations and how blind rotation influences them. In order to support their research with evidences, they carried out the experiment in which people learned positions of the objects in the room and then underwent different rotations. Results show that people remember location of the objects better while referring to their inter object relations and using some other kind of memory (Sargent, Dopkins, Philbeck, & Chichka, 2010).
One more important investigation of working memory was made by Valerie Camos in her work On the Law Relating Processing to Storage in Working Memory. The main aim of this work is to understand better peculiarities of the functioning of working memory and storing of information. There are also several experiments connected with this work which main aim is to investigate the relations between short term and working memory. Having carried out these experiments, the author comes to the conclusion, that short term memory is not just a subsystem of working one, however, it can be referred as one of its extreme states (Camos, 2011).
That is why, basing on the results of these researches, it is possible to suggest that mechanisms of memorizing are very complicated structures, which, though, are organized according to certain principles. Understanding and investigation of these principles can improve the history of process of memorizing and show better results in the end. That is why, it becomes obvious, that some techniques which take into account all these peculiarities will be able to improve memorization. The basis for these techniques is the relations between different aspects of the work of human memory. Being highly structured, it responses better to specially organized factors which are able to promote development of special connections in the brain of a person.
Having analyzed the data, it is possible to come to several conclusions. First of all, it should be said that the Mnemonics Techniques are proved to be effective as they are based on special processes which are peculiar for short term and work memory. That is why, these techniques could be recommended for people which suffer from some problems connected with memorizing or for people, who just need to improve their memorization skills
References
Camos, V. (2011). On the law relating processing to storage in working memory. Psychological Review, 118(2), 175-192. Web.
Coltheart, V., Mondy, S., Dux, P. E., & Stephenson, L. (2004). Effects of orthographic and phonological word length on memory for lists shown at rsvp and stm rates. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning , Memory and Cognition, 30(4), 815-826. Web.
Cumming, H. J., Pag, M. P., Norris, D., Hitch, G. J., & McNeil, A. L. (2006). Repetition learning in the immediate serial recall of visual and auditory materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(4), 716-733. Web.
Oberauer, K. (2002). Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28(3), 411-421. Web.
Sargent, J., Dopkins, S., Philbeck, J., & Chichka, D. (2010). Chunking in spatial memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 576-589. Web.