By Tal Dagan, Occupational Therapist.
Difficulty with memory can indicate problems remembering names, entering a room to fetch something and forgetting what it was, not remembering where the car is, etc. – it happens to everyone. Still, it is important to notice the frequency in which it occurs.
Memory processing consists of several necessary steps:
Acquisition: the information we receive from the environment is greatly influenced by the attention we pay to it. What we don’t absorb, we won’t remember either. For example, if someone introduces himself, and we don’t pay enough attention, we probably won’t be able to remember his name for two minutes afterward.
Storage: the information we record is stored for up to a few minutes in short-term memory, and some will be transferred to long-term memory. If the information is meaningful and linked to events or things we know and recognize, it will be stored better.
Let’s go back to the example of the man introducing himself. In order to increase our chances of remembering him later on, we can associate his name with someone or something we know or repeat it to ourselves a few times.
The last step is retrieval – searching for the information in the memory storage and extracting the memory at the desired time.
In order to improve our memory capabilities, it is important to notice which stage is more complicated for us and try to focus efforts there.
In addition, it is helpful to use various means that can help to conduct yourself efficiently and allow you to carry out your tasks: writing meetings in a calendar, using reminders on the phone, creating a grocery shopping list, and a medication organizer – because let’s face it, there is a good reason we all use them regularly.
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