Memorization

Memorization (British English: memorisation) is the process of committing something to memory. It is a mental process undertaken in order to store in memory for later recall visual, auditory, or tactical information. The scientific study of memory is part of cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Within the first three years of a child's life, they begin to show signs of memory that is later improved into their adolescent years. This includes short-term memory, long-term memory, working memory, and autobiographical memory. Memory is a fundamental capacity that plays a special role in social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Problems with studying the development of memorization include having to use verbal response and confirmation. Some principles and techniques that have been used to assist in memorization include: Rote learning, a learning technique which focuses not on understanding but on memorization by means of repetition. For example, if words are to be learned, they may be repeatedly spoken aloud or repeatedly written down. Specialized forms of rote learning have also been used in Vedic chant since as long as three thousand years ago, to preserve the intonation and lexical accuracy of very long texts, some with tens of thousands of verses. Spaced repetition, a principle of committing information into long-term memory by means of increasing time intervals between subsequent review of the previously learned material. Spaced repetition exploits the psychological spacing effect. This technique is combined with active recall by spaced repetition software such as SuperMemo, Anki or Mnemosyne. Active recall, a learning method that exploits the testing effect − the fact that memorization is more efficient when some time is devoted to actively retrieving the to-be-learned information through testing with proper feedback. Flashcards are a practical application of active recall.