Strategies to Improve Memory & Learning

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A pilot study suggests declines in temporal processing are an important part of age-related cognitive decline, and shows how temporal training can significantly improve some cognitive abilities.

Here’s an exciting little study, implying as it does that one particular aspect of information processing underlies much of the cognitive decline in older adults, and that this can be improved through training.

A review has concluded that spatial training produces significant improvement, particularly for poorer performers, and that such training could significantly increase STEM achievement.

Spatial abilities have been shown to be important for achievement in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math), but many people have felt that spatial skills are something you’re either born with or not.

Multitasking is significantly worse if your tasks use the same modality. Instant messaging while doing another visual-motor task reduces performance more than talking on the phone.

I’ve reported, often, on the evidence that multitasking is a problem, something we’re not really designed to do well (with the exception of a few fortunate individuals), and that the problem is r

Two recent conference presentations add to the evidence for the benefits of ‘brain training’, and of mental stimulation, for holding back age-related cognitive decline.

My recent reports on brain training for older adults (see, e.g., Review of working memory training programs finds no broader benefit;

More evidence that learning a musical instrument in childhood, even for a few years, has long-lasting benefits for auditory processing.

Adding to the growing evidence for the long-term cognitive benefits of childhood music training, a new study has found that even a few years of music training in childhood has long-lasting benefits for auditory discrimination.

In another example of how expertise in a specific area changes the brain, brain scans of piano tuners show which areas grow, and which shrink, with experience — and starting age.

I’ve reported before on how London taxi drivers increase the size of their posterior

Three recent studies show that meditation training reduces the stress of multitasking and reduces task-switching, that it improves white matter efficiency, and that the improved executive control may be largely to do with better emotional awareness and regulation.

Meditation may improve multitasking

A comparison of skilled action gamers and non-gamers reveals that all that multitasking practice doesn’t make you any better at multitasking in general.

The research is pretty clear by this point: humans are not (with a few rare exceptions) designed to multitask.

A comparison of the effects of regular sessions of tai chi, walking, and social discussion, has found tai chi was associated with the biggest gains in brain volume and improved cognition.

The study involved 120 healthy older adults (60-79) from Shanghai, who were randomly assigned to one of four groups: one that participated in three sessions of tai chi every week for 40 weeks; another that instead had ‘social interaction’ sessions (‘lively discussions’); another in which partici

Support for previous findings associating study abroad with increased creativity comes from a study comparing those who studied abroad with those who plan to, and those with no such intentions.

A couple of years ago I briefly reported on a finding that students who had lived abroad demonstrated greater creativity, if they first recalled a multicultural learning experience from their life abroad.

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