On August 12, I had the pleasure of giving the opening talk at this year’s Ancestral Health Symposium in Los Angeles, on the UCLA campus. The talk is a reflection on how the advent of digital technologies has been a double-edged sword: granting us access to a world of information and at the same time weakening our native ability to retain what we learn. I examine techniques used by pre-literate cultures to preserve and enhance Memory. Combined with insights from modern educational psychology, I suggest ways you can learn more effectively and improve your memory.

Click the image below to view the video on YouTube:

Here is a slide-by-slide synopsis:

1. This talk is about using desirable difficulties and hormesis to learn more effectively.

2. I’ve given five previous talks at AHS on topics ranging from vision improvement to overcoming obesity and addiction. The common theme is hormesis — the judicious use of low dose stress to get stronger in different ways.

3. Digital information technologies make learning more efficient, but not necessarily more effective. Making learning harder in specific ways can make it more effective. Techniques gleaned from pre-modern cultures can help you better retain new information and learn new skills.

4. Technologies like the internet and smart phones make it easy to look up information. However our reliance on this very ease of access can become a crutch, allowing our natural memory abilities to wither.

5. Robert and Elizabeth Bjork of UCLA investigated factors that lead to improved retention in learning. They found that more efficient methods improve short term retention, but it often fades quickly. More effortful methods improve retention.

6, 7. Studying under consistent conditions, covering one topic at a time, and reading notes facilitates short term recall and helps to pass quizzes. But over the longer term, it is better to vary study and learning conditions, space out learning sessions, and test yourself, not just read notes.

8. The Bjorks proposed the term “desirable difficulties” to describe learning challenges that force active engagement with the material to be learned. The challenge should be hard enough to require effort, even frustration, yet still allow for success.

9. The concept of desirable difficulties is similar to that of hormesis. Hormesis is a stress or stimulus sufficient to induce a beneficial response, but not so intense as to be injurious or detrimental. Weight training is a good example of hormesis; there is a “sweet spot” of intensity that produces strength gain–but not injury or failure.

10. Desirable difficulties embody three principles: (a) the process of learning or encoding is the same as that used for retrieval; (b) variation in timing and context ensures robustness; (c) the task pushes the learning to the edge of ability, while still allowing completion.

11. One application of this concept is note-taking. Keyboard note-taking on laptops allows faster, more complete transcription, but the slower, more selective process of handwritten notes forces active processing.

12. This was shown in a study of undergraduates tested after watching TED talks. The keyboarders tested better on isolated facts, but the longhand notetakers showed better comprehension of concepts

13. Taking notes in your own words improves understanding. Even better, using drawings and diagrams improves recall by forcing you to slow down and engage. Mind maps are a helpful way to organize information. Colors and shapes make notes more memorable.

14. Information printed in easy-to-read fonts allows faster reading and skimming, but a study showed that “disfluent” or hard-to-read fonts that slow you down actually improve recall.

15. Skepticism about “learning technologies” goes back to Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, which challenged the idea that the invention of writing would improve memory, rather than act as a crutch that undermines natural memory.

16. We will now consider what pre-modern cultures can teach us about improving memory skills .

17. Lynn Kelly’s book “Memory Craft” documents techniques used by oral cultures to remember and pass on knowledge about their heritage, geography and natural history. Kelly applied what she learned to win memory competitions and learn languages in her 60s.

18. Kelley documented memory techniques of Aboriginal Australians, Navajo and Neolithic Britons, to memorize long cross-continental routes or to catalogue birds, plants and insects. Many of these methods employ stories combined with song, dance and art.

19. The Roman orator Cicero documented the Method of Loci, or memory palaces, to remember stories and deliver speeches. Key events, people and objects in the story are placed along a route through a familiar building or street. Retracing the route triggers recall of the story. Adding emotion or vivid imagery strengthens the associations.

20. We can illustrate this by using a Memory Palace to memorize the first ten U.S. Presidents. It’s best to use your own home or a building you know well, but here we’ll use a generic 3-bedroom apartment. Experts suggest laying out memory locations in groups of 5 or 10, to help keep track of where you are and not miss a step.

21. So here we’ll place the first ten presidents in 10 spots: the first 5 in the entry, the fireplace, the kitchen, the dining room and the hall; the second 5 in the bedrooms and bathrooms.

22. If the names are hard for you to remember, make up vivid or even silly mnemonics, e.g. Washington = Wash your feet in the entry; Adams = atoms in the fireplace….Martin Van Buren = a vanity and bureau in the bathroom. If you are reading this or watching the video, practice this exercise now and test yourself at the end of the talk.

23. A typical problem in memory recall, say for a name of someone you just met, is that you can remember features of a name or word, like the first letter, number of syllables or meaning. When a word is on the tip of your tongue, resist asking for a hint or looking it up online. Often recall comes within minutes or hours. Success strengthens your recall circuitry.

24. Memory competitions showcase how “memory athletes” can perform amazing feats of memory. They use advanced association techniques, based on historical techniques like memory palaces.

25. Actors can learn entire scripts word-for-word by applying methods similar to those those of oral cultures, using pitch, intonation, cadence, kineshethic movement and personal associations to learn their lines. Rehearsing line out loud follows the Bjorks’ advice that the encoding process should be the same as the retrieval process.

26. Calculators and spreadsheets are invaluable for complex calculations. But its easy to be and let your “math muscles” wither. Practice the desirable difficulty of estimation skills to develop speed and intuition.

27. Similarly, GPS is a digital technology that is useful in getting us to unfamiliar places on time. But over-reliance weakens navigation skills. I found that memorizing local streets was a fun way to regain a sense of place and better orient myself in the town where I live.

28. The memory skills described above have a foundation in the hippocampus, where short term memories are formed and consolidated. Specialized cells respond to specific places, faces and temporal sequences.

29. You can put these skills into practice. It’s not so much about “rote memorization” as establishing “memory frameworks” on which to link new information. Memory frameworks can build a deeper appreciation of places, social networks, professional knowledge, or even improving enjoying of books, movies, sports and the natural environment.

30. One of the most tragic aspects of dementia is loss of personal identity and recognizing loved ones. Lynne Kelly recommends a Lakota practice of building “winter counts” – symbols that encode annual events in personal biography. A modern version of this would be to curate photo albums to use for multi-generational story telling.

31. We can also extend these desirable difficulties and hormesis to nonverbal skills. These skills go beyond mere recognition and recall to involve re-creation of some “performance”.

32. Let’s look at how this works with a few examples of non-verbal skill enhancement involving music, design and athletics.

33. Music teachers often maintain the importance of practicing with perfect form, so as not to learn mistakes. A more enlightened approach is to heed the Bjorks’ advice to practice with variations, e.g. in tempo. Pianist James Johnson also added desirable difficulties by practicing in the dark or with a sheet over the piano keys.

34. Computer-aided design makes revisions easier in architecture and design, but an investment of effort into freehand sketching skills is still taught as an aid to creativity and concept development, before moving to CAD.

35. A study in teaching ball throwing skills to 8 and 12 year olds found that practicing a bean bag toss at varied distances led to better accuracy then practicing at one fixed distance.

36. Making mistakes during learning may actually be helpful. A study showed that students that incorrectly guess a response and then see the answer, score higher when tested than students that just see the prompt and answer together. Mistakes with corrections drive engagement that facilitates learning better than passive absorption.

37, 38. A clever example of a desirable difficulty is using intense “compressed” simulations of difficult skills. Examples include the Brazilian game of Futsal, using small heavy balls, and flight simulators to teach difficult flight maneuvers.

39. Digital technology is useful, particularly when learning information you’ll only use a few times. But for repeat-use information where a mental map or framework can help navigate the physical or social world, mental memory is advantageous.

40. In summary, you can strengthen your memory and ability to learn by five strategies: (1) take notes in your own words; (2) test yourself constantly; (3) resist hints; (4) experiment with memory palaces; (5) make it fun and active.

41. A list of references is provided for further reading.

42. For more applications of hormesis, explore this blog — gettingstronger.org.

43. Now see if you can remember the first 10 U.S. presidents in order.