Named the most effective way to memorize something

Scientists from Merrimack College led by Dr. Laura Kurdziel concluded that conscious intention to memorize information works more effectively than emotional response. The research results are published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

As reported by BAKU.WS with reference to Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, researchers compared the influence of emotions and purposeful effort on the memorization process. Experiment participants were shown various words: some they were asked to remember, others - to forget. Some words had negative emotional coloring, while others remained neutral.

Later, the subjects were asked to recall as many words as possible. It turned out that the best remembered were precisely those words that people were consciously told to remember - even if they did not evoke strong emotions. At the same time, emotionally colored words were remembered slightly better than neutral ones.

"We found that our intention to remember or forget has a much greater influence than the emotional tone of information. We control our memories more than we think," noted Dr. Kurdziel.

Scientists emphasized that attention and motivation play a key role in memory formation. Emotions only enhance the effect but cannot replace it.

"When the brain receives the directive 'remember this,' it marks information as significant and stores it in long-term memory, while simultaneously suppressing less important data. This increases memorization efficiency," added the researcher.