Does the following scenario sound familiar to you? "You are in the living room and you realize you need something from your bedroom. Once you arrive in the bedroom, however, you have no idea why you made the trip. You return to the living room, and you immediately remember what you wanted.”
The reason you remembered it immediately when you were back in the living room is because contextual cues are highly important for remembering. It is also proven that students who made the exam in the same room they studied, tend to have better results than students who studied in a different room. (Do not ask me why the University always gives us another room during the exam than the one we had classes in for half a year).
Trick 1: It could be very helpful to visualize the original context where the information was learned during the exam.
Try to see it, feel it, hear it, smell it, taste it; all senses could help you to remind something. Therefore, if you were eating chocolate during studying, you should definitely bring some during the exam. The taste could bring back other contextual factors that can help you remind the facts you learned, and off course it is always nice to have a good excuse for eating chocolate.
Another important aspect of memory is fragrance. Fragnances often remind you of a specific place, for example a vacation, or a specific person. This is because the area in your brains that stores memories, is close to the area that receives oder stimuli. Link a fragnance to a fact and you remember it easier. This can be really helpful when learning for an exam.
Trick 2: If you wear the same fragrance during learning as during the examen, you will see that you can remind the facts you learned better and easier.
So, do not feel guilty anymore when you are again buying a new perfume. You’re just improving your memory!
Come back next sunday, for more memory tricks!
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3 comments to "Memory Tricks Part 1: How chocolate and perfume can help you improve your grades"
About Me
- Saskia Kanters
- Student Business Communication and Digital Media @ Tilburg University
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As says:
and just another reason to eat lots of chocolate ;)
Margot says:
Think I'm gonna try this with my resit of Communication in Organisations! Drink coffee, eat chocolate and wear the same perfume... let's see if it helps :)
Anonymous says:
Didn't know about this perfume thing, getting perfume on Valentines Day is not romantic anymore..