ESTABLISHING YOUR MEMORY POWER

Before you begin developing your memory it is a great idea to have a little fun and find out just how strong your memorisation powers are right now.  Doing these short quizzes will show you where your memory is strongest – eg., you remember historical dates well or you remember lists of common goods easily.  Of course they will also show you where you memory needs to have a bit of practise. 


Remember – if you don’t use it – you lose it!!


Psychologists have come to the conclusion that we remember things by joining a certain part of them with other things. For example, on returning to an old home or your old school, you may have realised that seeing a certain picture on the wall, or a certain piece of furniture, etc., made you 'suddenly remember' things that you would otherwise, have entirely forgotten. Your mind was linking all the ideas and memories that had been associated with the object at which you were looking. This principle applies, no matter how complicated the memory  situation is. Even when remembering complicated mathematical formulas or very abstract ideas, there is a link in the background which triggers the memory you want.

LINK TEST

Read the list of 20 objects once through, and then immediately cover it or close the book. On a separate piece of paper write down as many of them as you can remember, attempting to get them in the correct order. Score yourself in two ways:

  • The number of items you remembered out of 20
  • The number of items that you listed in the correct order (if you reversed certain items they are both wrong with regard to the second score! J  Sorry!).

Cup
Shop
Chimney pot
Judge
Suitcase
Toe
Mountain
Star
Couch
Jail
Spoon
Book
Spider
Scissors
Plant
Nurse
River
Stain
Mongrel
Ice Cream

Score: Number remembered ..................................................
Number in correct order...........................................................

PEG TEST
Give yourself no more than four minutes to remember this second list of 20 items.

The aim in this test is to remember the items in any order, connecting them to their appropriate number. When four minutes have passed

  • cover the list up
  • then write the numbers from 1-20 on a piece of paper,
  • and fill in the answers randomly (pick a number on the list and fill in the item which belongs to that number.)

 Do not progress one after the other from 1-20. Jump about all over the numbers
until you have filled in as many as you can. Just pick the numbers out of the air and fill in the associated item!  It’s easy – really it is.

1. Tar
2. Aeroplane
3. Leaf
4. Shell
5. Hair
6. Moon
7. Lever
8. Lighter
9. Railway
10. Field
11. Atom
12. Wheel
13. School
14. Sand
15. Doctor
16. Spectacles
17. Lake
18. Feather
19. Sock
20. Pump
Score: Number correct

NUMBER TEST
Look at the four 15-digit numbers printed below
Then - giving not more than one minute of attention to each one – cover the list and write down the number as best you can.  Give yourself one mark for every number that you put down in the correct place.

936811475298694
937943271621487
689223841378534
543712298374973
Score:
1 ...........................
2.............................
 3 ..........................
4............................

 

DATES TEST
This next test is the last. Listed below are ten fairly important historical dates. Your task is to spend not more than a minute and a half remembering the event and the date. Give yourself one mark for a perfectly accurate answer and half a mark if you come within five years.

1. 1666 Fire of London
2. 1770 Beethoven's birthday
3. 1215 Signing of Magna Carta
4. 1917 Russian Revolution
5. c.1454 First Printing Press
6. 1815 Battle of Waterloo
7. 1608 Invention of the telescope
8. 1905 Einstein's theory of Relativity
9. 1789 French Revolution
10. 1776 Declaration of American Independence
Score:.........................

That ends the testing! If you have done badly then you have done well as that means you are average!  Very few people actually use their brains purposely and regularly to build their memory power.  You can easily make yourself a bit of a memory super star by just doing some regular things to get that memory revving itself up again and really improving your memory fire power.


* Do things like having a go at writing in what you remember about a subject rather than reaching for ‘google’ because you can’t be bothered to actually bring it back into your awareness.  You can always double check on yourself once you have tried to write whatever it is down.


*  Stop – don’t use that calculator right now.  Do a bit of mental arithmetic for that simple calculation.  You can do it – you can add, subtract, multiply and divide if you focus. 


*  Set yourself a goal to complete a new puzzle each day. Whether it's a crossword, Sudoku, a brainteaser or whatever.  Do it!  Your brain will really enjoy it and soon you will be remembering all kinds of things as your brain gets its neurons all fired up again.