Self-Imagination Can Boost Memory

A new journal on clinical psychological science just launched with some interesting insights into how to improve brain function and cognitive performance. One article, Imaging a Better Memory, suggests that we can improve our ability to memorize if we imagine a scenario that associates the word or concept we want to recall with ourselves.

For example, to remember a long list of words we would imagine ourselves acting out or otherwise embodying each of the words.  This is contrasted to techniques where, for example, we think of words that rhyme with the target word,   recall the word’s definition or remember a past situation involving the word.   The results were decisive:

“For all participants, healthy and memory-impaired, self-imagination boosted free recall of the personality traits more than any of the other strategies did.”

Self-imaging or envisioning yourself acting out or living the idea you want to remember may be a powerful new memory technique.  More research is needed to establish the idea scientifically.

I am interested to hear from readers that have used self-imagination to help with a memory task.