How to make sure you never forget your brolly again
THE next time you need to remember your umbrella, imagine the tip getting stuck in the lock of the front door, preventing you from opening it.
It may seem strange, but this technique has been shown to work particularly well for those who are forgetful.
This is because imagining two separate objects interacting triggers the brain to remember them – meaning you are sure to pick up your brolly on your way out of the door.
And if you often lose your keys, it might be helpful to imagine them badly scratching the kitchen table you have left them on.
Experts in Canada tested the tactic on 80 people aged 61 to 88, who boosted their performance significantly in memory tests.
This is because older people can remember individual things, such as ‘table’ and ‘keys’, just as well as they did when they were young. However, mentally linking two apparently unconnected ideas, such as ‘ umbrella’ and ‘door’, becomes trickier.
Imagining an action and a consequence together, such as the keys scratching the table, is an effective method because it makes the brain group the two separate items together as one.
The study on the memory strategy, which the researchers called ‘unitisation’, is published in the journal Memory & Cognition.
For their experiment, the scientists tested the effectiveness of the method using a computer game. Participants were asked to use one of four memory techniques to work out the winner in pairs of pictures.
The results revealed that visualising an action and consequence between two objects makes it far easier to keep them in mind. In tests, the threshold to show that a particular mental strategy has worked better than simply trying to remember is 67 per cent.
The researchers found that those using the unitisation technique achieved 78 per cent.
This compared very well with the other three strategies, which fell below the threshold, suggesting they were little or no help.
Co-author Professor Jennifer Ryan, from the University of Toronto, said: ‘Previous research has shown that imagining two objects fusing into one will help people work around these memory deficits, but our work demonstrated that understanding the relationship between the two items is also important.
‘We know that cognitive function is impaired during ageing and this strategy could be one workaround for minor memory problems, depending on what you need to achieve.’
Professor Ryan, who carried out the research with colleagues from Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, where she is senior scientist, said: ‘We are trying to understand what’s important to unitisation and what people need to learn in order to benefit.
‘There is no single strategy that will fix your memory, but one method may be more suitable than another.’
The technique is only found to work in older people who are not suffering from cognitive decline, as it requires the brain to carry out more than one function at once.