To Remember Multiple Items: Put Them in Related Groups
Memory formation and recall are greatly influenced by how items of information relate to each other. In the case of words, different words that have related categorical meanings are often easier to remember as a unit. For example, in a list of words that include spinach, cabbage, and lettuce, recalling any one of these words will assist in recall of the other two, because they have a related meaning of green vegetables. They are "semantically clustered." Several studies have shown that when people are asked to memorize a list of words and recall them in any order, they tend to recall words that are related. For example, in a list that contains animal names, flowers, grocery items, and historical events, a person who recalls "cat" is also likely to recall the "dog" item that was in the list. This happens because we all have a tendency to organize things by groups. Few of us capitalize on the power of this approach with a deliberate strategy to do so. In a ...